^. 


5W  X^\.<^ 


IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-3) 


1.0 


1.1 


■  43 

■  30 


121    12.5 


mm 


122 
I   1^    12.0 

u 


WUt. 


IL25  i  1.4 


i 


1^1 1,6 


Photographic 

Sdaices 

Corporation 


33  WEST  MAIN  STREET 

WEBSTER,  N.Y.  MStO 

(716)  872-4503 


\ 


.\'. 


^^ 


^^ 


o 


i\ 


CIHM/ICMH 

Microfiche 

Series. 


CIHM/ICMH 
Collection  de 
microfiches. 


Canadian  Institute  for  Historical  Microreproductions  /  Institut  Canadian  de  microreproductions  historiques 


^ 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes/Notes  techniques  et  bibllographique* 


Tl 
tc 


The  Institute  has  attempted  to  obtain  the  best 
original  copy  available  for  filming.  Features  of  this 
copy  which  may  ba  bibliographically  unique, 
which  may  alter  any  of  the  Images  in  the 
reproduction,  or  which  may  significantly  change 
the  usual  method  of  filming,  are  checked  below. 


D 


D 
D 


D 


Coloured  covers/ 
Couverture  de  couleur 


[~~|    Covers  damaged/ 


Couverture  endommagde 

Covers  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Couverture  restaur^  et/ou  pelliculAe 

Cover  title  missing/ 

Le  titre  de  couverture  manque 

Coloured  maps/ 

Cartes  g^ographiques  en  couleur 

Coloured  ink  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)/ 
Encre  d6  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 

Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations/ 
Planches  et/ou  illustrations  en  couleur 


D 


Bound  with  other  material/ 
Reii6  avec  d'autres  documents 

Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion 
along  interior  margin/ 

La  re  liure  serrde  peut  causer  de  I'ombre  ou  de  la 
distortion  le  long  de  la  marge  int^rieure 

Blank  leaves  added  during  restoration  may 
appear  within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these 
have  been  omitted  from  filming/ 
II  se  peut  que  certaines  pages  blanches  ajouttos 
lore  d'une  restauration  apparaissent  dans  le  texte, 
mais,  lorsque  ceia  6tait  possible,  ces  pages  n'ont 
pas  dt6  filmdes. 

Additional  comments:/ 
Commentalres  suppl^mentalres; 


L'Institut  a  microfilm^  le  meilleur  exemplaire 
qu'il  lui  a  M  possible  de  se  procurer.  Les  details 
de  cet  exemplaire  qui  sont  peut-Atre  uniques  du 
point  de  vue  bibllographique,  qui  peuvent  modifier 
une  image  reproduite,  ou  qui  peuvent  exiger  une 
modification  dans  la  methods  normale  de  flimage 
sont  indiquAs  ci-dessous. 


D 

D 
D 
0 

n 


x/ 


n 


Coloured  pages/ 
Pages  de  couleur 

Pages  damaged/ 
Pages  endommagies 

Pages  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Pages  restaurtes  et/ou  pellicuMes 

Pages  discoloured,  stained  or  foxed/ 
Pages  dicolortes,  tachettes  ou  piqutes 

Pages  drtached/ 
Pages  d6tachtes 

Showthrough/ 
Transparence 

Quality  of  print  varies/ 
Quality  inAgale  de  I'impression 

Includes  supplementary  material/ 
Comprend  du  materiel  suppitfmentaire 

Only  edition  available/ 
Seule  Mition  disponible 

Pages  wholly  or  partially  obscured  by  errata 
slips,  tissues,  etc.,  have  been  ref limed  to 
ensure  the  best  possible  Image/ 
Les  pages  totalement  ou  partiellement 
obscurcies  par  un  feuillet  d'errata,  une  pelure, 
etc.,  ont  6t6  fllm^es  A  nouveau  de  fa^on  A 
obtenir  la  meilleure  image  possible 


Tl 

P' 
oi 
fll 


O 
b( 
H 
si 
ot 
fll 
si 

OI 


Tl 
si 
Tl 
v«i 

di 
ei 
bi 
ri 
re 
m 


This  item  is  filmed  at  the  reduction  ratio  checked  below/ 

Ce  document  est  filmi  au  taux  de  rMuctlon  indlquA  ci-dessous. 

10X  14X  18X  22X 


26X 


30X 


y 


12X 


16X 


20X 


24X 


28X 


32X 


tails 

du 
odifiar 

una 
tnaga 


Tha  copy  filmad  hara  has  baan  raproducad  thanks 
to  tha  ganarosity  of: 

D.  B.  Waldon  Library 
Univaraity  of  Western  Ontario 

Tha  imagas  appaaring  hara  ara  tha  bast  quality 
possibia  considaring  tha  condition  and  lagibility 
of  tha  original  copy  and  in  kaaping  with  tha 
filming  contract  spacifications. 


L'axamplaira  fiimt  fut  raproduit  grAca  A  la 
g6n6rositA  da: 

D.  B.  Weldon  Ubrary 
University  of  Western  Ontario 

Las  Imagas  suivantes  ont  6x6  reproduitas  avec  ie 
plus  grand  soin.  compte  tenu  da  la  condition  at 
da  la  natteti  da  l'axamplaira  film6.  at  an 
conformity  avec  las  conditions  du  contrat  da 
filmaga. 


Original  copias  in  printad  papai  covars  ara  filmad 
beginning  with  tha  front  covar  and  ending  on 
tha  last  page  with  a  printad  or  iiluatratad  impres- 
sion, or  the  back  covar  when  appropriate.  All 
other  original  copias  are  filmed  beginning  on  the 
first  page  with  a  printad  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, and  ending  on  the  last  page  with  a  printad 
or  illustrated  impression. 


Les  examplaires  originaux  dor  "^  la  couvarture  en 
papier  est  imprimis  sont  film6s  en  commen9ant 
par  la  premier  plat  at  en  tarminant  soit  par  la 
derniire  page  qui  comporta  una  amprainte 
d'imprassion  ou  d'illustration,  soit  par  la  second 
plat,  salon  la  cas.  Tous  les  autras  examplaires 
originaux  sont  film6s  an  commandant  par  la 
premiere  page  qui  comporta  una  amprainte 
d'imprassion  ou  d'illustration  at  en  terminant  par 
la  darnidre  page  qui  comporta  una  telle 
empreinte. 


The  last  recorded  frame  on  each  microfiche 
shall  contain  tha  symbol  —^•(meaning  "CON- 
TINUED"), or  the  symbol  y  (meaning  "END"), 
whichever  applies. 


Un  des  symboles  suivants  apparaitra  sur  la 
darnidre  image  da  chaque  microfiche,  salon  Ie 
cas:  la  symbole  — ►  signifie  "A  SUIVRE  ".  Ie 
symbols  V  signifie  "FIN". 


Maps,  plates,  charts,  etc..  may  be  filmed  at 
different  reduction  ratios.  Tnosa  too  large  to  be 
entirely  included  in  one  exposure  are  filmed 
beginning  in  the  upper  left  hand  corner,  left  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  frames  as 
required.  The  following  diagrams  illustrate  the 
method: 


Les  cartas,  planches,  tableaux,  etc.,  peuvent  6tre 
film6s  d  des  taux  da  reduction  diffirents. 
Lorsque  'e  document  est  trop  grand  pour  dtre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  cliche,  il  est  film6  d  partir 
da  I'angle  supirieur  gauche,  de  gauche  d  droite, 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  an  pranant  Ie  nombre 
d'images  ndcessaire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  m6thode. 


rrata 
o 


>elure, 
1  A 


3 

32X 


1 

2 

3 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

,,    I 


■"""PC      » 


9 


\i- 


■  V. 


in 


MOUNT   ROYAL 


Montreal 


FREDERICK   LAW    OLMSTED 


NEW  YORK 
p.      PUTNAM'S      SONS 

27  &   20   WEST   23"   STREET 

i88i 


1 


MOUNT  ROYAL 


4>»3^.»«.,,>,ij  ,  ^  ^ 


# 


fl 


:^ 


1^1   f 


__-j1 


^'^c^^ 


"  The  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colors  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite  ;  a  fcelinR  and  a  love, 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm 
By  thoughts  suppVied,"—H^ordswori/t. 

"  The  groves  were  God's  first  temple."— />V^<i«A 

'•  Yet  nature  soothes  and  sympathises."— /iw*rjtf«. 

'*  The  landscape,  forever  consoling  and  kind. 
Pours  her  wine  and  her  oil  on  the  smarts  of  the  mind."— Z,ow^//. 

"  No  tears  dim  the  sweet  look  that  Nature  viesi.T%.'"—Lont^/eiioiv. 

"  It  IS  the  greatest  refreshment  to  the  spirits  of  man,  without  which  buildings 
and  palaces  are  but  gross  handiworks."— ^acYJw. 

"  Great  Nature  scorns  control :    she  will  not  bear 
One  beauty  foreign  to  the  spot  or  soil 
She  gives  thee  to  adorn  :    'T  is  thine  alone 
To  mend  not  change  her  features.     Does  her  hand 
Stretch  forth  a  level  lawn  ?    Ah,  hope  not  thou 
To  lift  the  mountain  there.    Do  mountains  frown 
Around  ?    Oh,  wish  not  there  the  level  lawn. 
Yet  she  permits  thy  art,  discreetly  us'd, 
To  smooth  the  rugged  and  to  swell  the  jilain. 
But  dare  with  caution  I  "—Afason. 

"  The  art  itself  is  Nature."— .S/trt/tfjr/^rtr*. 

"  For,  and  this  is  at  the  root  of  the  matter,  every  thing  made  by  man's  hands 
has  a  form  which  must  be  beautiful  or  ugly  :  beautiful,  if  it  is  in  accord  with 
Nature  and  helps  her;  ugly,  if  it  is  discordant  with  Nature  and  thwarts 
her." — lyUJiam  Morris. 

"  Without  principles,  no  true  beauty  can  be  attained." 
"  The  first  law  of  a  good  design  is  that  it  shall  be  a  whole." — A  mird. 

"  The  siiii/tle  and  uncombined  landscape,  if  wrought  out  with  due  attention 
to  the  ideal  beauty  of  the  features  it  includes ,  will  always  be  most  powerful  in 
its  appeal  to  the  heart. '^ — RusKlN. 


PREFACE 

Ideas  like  those  expressed  opposite  Iiave  long  had  considerable 
currency.  If  they  are  of  any  practical  value,  the  Mount  Royal 
property  gives  a  rare  opportunity  of  turning  them  to  business 
account  in  a  special  form  of  wealth  for  all  of  a  large  community.  I 
have  aimed  to  show  in  the  following  pages  what  has  hitherto  been  in 
the  way  of  it.  When  they  were  printed  I  had  been  in  communication 
with  no  one  in  Montreal  for  upward  of  two  years,  and  it  is  only  since 
that  I  am  informed  of  an  entire  change  in  the  managing  board  of 
the  property.  I  am  yet  ignorant  of  the  motives  of  the  change,  and 
if  what  I  have  written  touches  any  question  of  recent  public  dis- 
cussion, or  bears  at  all  upon  the  present  purposes  or  projects  of 
any  parties  or  persons,  it  is  not  of  my  intention. 


fr 

I 


I 

I 


9B 


To  the  Oivners  of  Mount  Royal  : 

In  1874  you  had  bought  this  property  and  were  wishing  to  begin  its 
improvement.  To  do  so  prudently,  you  needed  a  fixed  design  and 
policy,  and  to  forward  this,  I  had  the  honor  to  be  engaged  to  aid  you, 
with  the  special  duty  of  drafting  a  plan  for  laying  out  the  ground. 

It  was  presumed  that  my  draft  would  be  matured,  discussed,  and, 
if  necessary,  revised  in  time  to  serve  as  the  basis  of  operations  to  be 
prosecuted  the  following  summer  ;  and  I  have  no  reason  to  doubt 
that  I  could  easily  have  supplied  a  drawing  in  a  few  months,  which 
would  have  been  accepted  as  the  fulfilment  of  my  duty. 

The  matter,  however,  gave  me  a  great  deal  of  labor,  and  was  a 
source  of  constant  and  increasing  anxiety  for  nearly  three  years,  and 
when,  at  last,  under  repeated  urgings,  I  reluctantly  reported  the  re- 
sult, it  was  with  the  conviction  that  my  work  had,  with  reference  to 
Its  principal  object,  been  vainly  expended. 

Having  a  strong,  abiding  sense  of  its  importance,  I  have  not  been 
able  to  acquit  myself  of  accountability  to  you  and  your  heirs,  and 
have  deferred  a  formal  ending  of  my  engagement,  pending  conditions 
less  unfavorable  than  those  of  the  late  extreme  hard  times,  to  solicit 
a  consideration  from  you  for  views  which  it  will  be  my  aim  in  this 
writing  to  commend. 

I  cannot  but  think  that  a  certain  dead  weight  of  passive  public 
opinion,  which,  rather  than  an  actively  intelligent  resistance,  I  have 
seen  to  stand  in  their  way,  is  partly  to  be  attributed  to  an  overlook- 
mg  of  certain  aspects  of  the  business  which  I  have  had  a  special  duty 
to  keep  before  me. 


I 


I'lii  cmiiiiiilc,  I  jif,  iKiw  irfcrrc'l  to  your  licirs,  wliicli  to  sotno  may 
liiivf  M  Till.. I  ■.ii|.rilliic>ii  ,  ;  lull  wilh  ;i  liltli;  rcllcction  it  will  he 
ii|i|)iiii'iii  iliii  ilir-  pi<>|ii-ii  V  I  oiilil  111)1  liavt!  been  justly  purchased 
Willi  i<|..iit|  I, Illy  l<>i  ilic  piotii  In  lie  |;c.i  from  it  l)y  ;i  few  thousands 
III  ilir  I'l  iiri.iiiiiii  <(iitriiii|'  ii  ,  .nnl  iliil  I  was  hound,  in  sii^'j^esting  a 
|il.iii,  I.,  ii.ur  III  virw  llir  iiilcu'sis  of  those  to  inherit  it  as  well  as 
y""i  .  ,  .md  III  In-. II  in  iiiind  Ih.il,  hcfore  the  lirst  plantiiij^  of  the  plan- 
l.ili.in.  uliiih  I  w.is  lo  Kuliinc  sliould  rc.u  h  their  full  j;rowtli,  these 
liilii'iiiiii  UMidd  ln;'iM  III  he  coimicd  not  hv  the  thousand  hut  by  the 
iiiillinn  ,  .iiid  .il  .«>  lo  iiiufinhcr  that,  it  eivili/atioii  is  not  to  move 
litit  Kw.iid.  liiiv  .iif  III  in-  null  li  more  alive  than  we  are  to  certain 
t|iiiliii,  ,  I'l  \.iluc  III  the  piopei IV  which  are  to  he  saved  or  lost  to 
lli'in,  ,1.  •.h.ill  |MC'.cntlv  lie  diMci  mined. 

And  Ic  .1  ihcic  •-hould  l>e  the  s!i^!\test  doubt  in  any  of  your  minds 
ol  ilir  |i.iiinci\i  (•  I'l  inv  i.iLiM;;  lius  wav  to  diaw  vour  attention  to  this 
Mild  '..Mu.-  I'lliii  I  i>n-.ulci.ui.'ns,  1  wdl  submit  a  sinj^Ie  illustration  of 
iii.inv  wliuli  mij;hi  be  »>lU-icvl  ot  the  teachings  of  historv  upon  the 
I'l'inl. 


Ab,>nt  tl\.'  time  tlia!  ccitain  Ktenchmcn  wore  laving;  out  the  first 
stieci  ,<t  \b>niK-al,  a  Cv'as!  co;nKu!c  w  luvn  tliov  had  let:  l-vehind.  a 
Khstin'.'.ui-.hcd  man  v't  uu  piofcssUMi.  Andre  I  o  Notre  bv  name.  wa5 
la>nu'.  v«ut  i\>a>U  an>l  walks,  detimns;  plantation^,  sc'.ec.ing  trees,  tix- 
»i\jl  the  toim  aiul  psVs.f.vva  of  seats,  and  «.^thcrw\<e  detsnair.ifi:  the 
chaiactei  aiivl  v|uab..\  v't  a  pa;^  a:  Pwiu.  the  capital  ot  uicica:  Bur- 
>;uiulv,  anvl  v't  '.hv-  •.".e-.cnt  v.o',c  vlv."*; . 

Since  I  was  ',.'.•.•,  i(\  Mv'> ■.•.:•  •.■.•,',  I  '•av,:'  •.v.a,'.;«  a  vilgnma^  to  'i.s 
liUHViid  ^".v"'};  aji\»  ac\;u-.uNl  bv  th.'  town',  ar..,!  found  the  s-;o<er.r.:sr.i- 
cut  v>t  It  >ud  \ct'.'0"a\>UN'.v  tx»!'.ow.:>j;  the  ',\.i:^>  v"^:Mre-d  Kior-e  thar.  t-ar? 
hund'.cxl  >oa'.>a;-o  b\  I  c  No.;v.  ao.d  .h.-  •.v.oi-.v-s  bv  which  hi  wis  >i. 
<Mul  the  p'.c.'.'.ivN  which  he  had  co-.'.vV.vvvi.  i-ouch  h'.'::;r  -^i!  :;•.:  :hj^. 
thov  vNhjM  ha\e  'sv.>.  w'^-'o  h.-  wa^  %-■:  !  vu^g.  Th?  rva.U.  :h;  -rxliLj. 
the  v^ul.iu;  c4S',s'5>,  the  'oatv  vi>;A> — rt  nocif  of  :h*>^  hjt'i  :h^  or^-jial 
\>\M\  ;o.x;,  Ol  oven  ^va-^v?  :o  sjJtfo..  vji;^,'  ,  ir*^-  [  j^.^  ci-Iirsz  :c 
the  »v\vu»U  ^vucv.a;v41  i«  d-.rv\-c  d'^^vn;  trvca  fiv.**?  vh-osa  L.?  N::re 


J^ 


looked  upon,  carried  by  their  mothers,  and  led  l)y  their  tcacliers, 
as  their  kindred  now  are,  to  your  mountain,  to  take  tlieir  share  of  the 
value  which  had  so  long  ajjo  been  prepared  for  thctn.  It  is  not  at  all 
improbable  that  yet  for  hundreds  of  years  to  come  every  child  of 
Dijon  shall  enjoy  the  same  nurture. 

To  our  nineteenth-century  minds  the  design  of  the  park  nii^^ht, 
for  this  end,  have  been  better,  but  it  was  then  the  best  atlaiMabie, 
and  the  good  pcojilc  of  Dijon  have  shown  the  i)ighest  common-sense 
in  resisting  all  passing  fashions,  fancies,  anrl  whims  by  wliicli  it  niij^lil 
have  Ijeen  sophisticated  ;  in  religiously  |)reservin^  its  originating 
spirit  and  character  ;  and  in  gaining  for  tlieniselves,  year  by  year,  moro 
and  more  (jf  tlic  incalcuhible  advantage  of  learning,  by  coniiuunic^n 
with  it,  veneration  for  the  pust  and  duty  to  the  future. 


i 


I  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  one  in  Montreal  has  been  dis- 
satisfied with  my  work.  No  one  has  sjjokcn  of  it,  as  far  as  I  know, 
but  with  praise.  To  understand  why  it  seemed  to  me  to  have  been 
futile,  it  must  first  be  considered  that  the  prejjaration  of  a  i>ian  means 
the  invention  of  a  process  by  which  certain  proposed  ends  may  be 
brought  about  upon  certain  conditions.  A  plan  serviceable  for  one 
scheme  of  ends  will  be  worthless  for  another.  A  [jjan  s'^undly  basi  d 
on  one  set  of  conditions  will  be  good  for  nothing  when  these  condi- 
tions are  changed. 

The  reason  for  the  prolonged  labor,  and  the  poor  results  of  it,  which 
were  at  the  outset  given  to  the  study  of  a  plan  assigned,  in  your  be- 
half, to  me,  was  that,  as  to  one  point  or  another  essential  to  the  firm 
framing  of  a  plan  adapted  to  a  fixed  policy  in  this  business,  your 
appointed  special  agents,  the  commissioners,  could  never  be  sure  that 
their,  or  any  attainable,  conclusion  was  at  all  to  be  depend'/!  on  ; 
never  sure  of  what  might  be  determined  over  their  heads  ;  n':ver  of 
what,  of  their  own  judgment,  upon  the  absolutely  essential  foundation- 
stones  of  a  soundly-built  plan,  they  might  not  fee!  it  due,  any  corning 
day,  to  yield  to  what  should  appear  to  them  to  be  a  determined  drift 
of  public  opinion. 


«s 


^^mm 


More  than  once  I  had  a  design  worked  out  upon  grounds  which  I 
had  been  instructed  to  regard  as  fixed,  or  authorized  to  assume,  at 
the  least,  as  practicable,  and  upon  which  I  had  been  urged  to  pro- 
ceed ;  in  which  I  had  met,  with  a  great  deal  of  study,  according  to 
my  ability,  all  the  difficulties  which  I  could  foresee  ;  each  element 
devised,  as  for  as  controllable,  to  augment  the  value  of  all  others  and 
to  be  augmented  in  value  by  all  devised  of  others  ;  only  to  find  that 
it  must  be  thrown  up  and  the  work  begun  anew  at  the  bottom,  be- 
cause of  the  ripening  of  some  determination  or  the  unsettlement  of 
something  previously  regarded  as  determined. 

Not  one  of  the  changes  to  which  I  refer  appeared  to  be  the  result 
of  a  more  advanced  deliberation  upon  the  object  which  had  led  to 
the  purchase  of  the  property,  or  to  have  been  made  with  a  full 
realization  of  what  was  determined  by  it  with  respect  to  that 
object. 

Nor,  in  the  discussion  of  them,  did  I  hear  that  what  I  believe 
and  propose  to  argue  should  be  the  ruling  motive  of  the  undertaking 
had  even  been  given  the  slightest  weight.  In  the  questions  put  to  me 
it  was  not  referred  to  ;  and  the  reason  I  suppose  to  be,  not  that  those 
favoring  the  propositions  in  question  really  thought  it  of  no  conse- 
quence, but  that  they  were  not  in  the  habit  of  looking  at  it  in  a  prac- 
tical way— of  considering  it  from  the  point  of  view  of  business. 

Even  when,  after  three  years,  I  had  submitted  my  final  draft  and 
it  had  been  favorably  received  by  the  commissioners,  I  was  told  (as  if 
it  were  a  matter  of  little  consequence  and  to  have  been  more  or  less 
expected)  that  certain  of  the  premises  on  which  it  had  been  based,  and 
which  had  been  as  distinctly  recognized  in  my  instructions  as  any, 
would  probably  be  withdrawn  by  the  City  Council,  and  others  were 
referred  as  not  unlikely  to  be.  It  did  not  appear  to  be  supposed  that 
the  plan  would  be  materially  less  adapted  to  its  purpose  in  conse- 
quence,  and  yet  I  doubt  if  I  had  not  had  the  particular  premises  in 
question  in  view,  whether  a  line  or  adot-of  my  draft  would  have  been 
in  the  same  place  or  been  made  without  a  variation  of  motive. 

Besides  what  occurred  in  the  more  conclusive  official  form,  I  was 
often  asked  to  consider  propositions  urged  upon  the  commissioners, 
which  were  based  on  ideas  of  the  conditions  of  value  in  the  property 

4 


) 


i 


so  different  from  those  on  which  I  was,  with  their  concurrence,  pro- 
ceeding, and  yet  so  urged,  so  received  and  labored  with,  as  to  show 
that  no  real  anchorage  in  the  matter  was  felt  to  be  practicable. 

In  short,  it  was  impossible  to  avoid  a  conviction  that,  whatever  for- 
mality of  adopting  a  plan  might  be  ultimately  come  to,  there  could  be 
no  security  against  such  subsequent  interpolations  and  excisions  as 
would  make  the  result  a  burlesque  of  its  leading  motives. 

Contending  with  easy,  apparent  success  with  the  side-winds  of 
doctrine  fas  to  conditions  of  value  of  the  property)  to  which  I  have 
referred,  as  far  as  the  commissioners  of  the  moment  were  concerned, 
the  wish  was  often  expressed  that  I  would  give  you,  directly,  in  the 
form  of  public  discourse,  the  view  which  my  study  of  the  subject  had 
led  me  to  adopt,  and  upon  which  the  plan  was  expected  to  be  based. — 
upon  which,  indeed,  important  operations  upon  the  ground  had  some- 
what prematurely  been  begun,  quite  unjustifiably  if  that  view  was  not 
to  be  sustained  and  borne  out  by  those  to  direct  the  matter  after- 
ward. 

And  as,  at  last,  it  became  more  distinctly  impressed  upon  me  that 
the  work  I  was  doing,  or  the  worthy  work  of  any  man  at  any  time, 
was  liable  to  be  wasted  or  worse,  because  of  the  supposed  impractica- 
bility of  any  fixed  policy  based  on  a  deliberate  study  of  principle'^, 
and  as  I  saw  no  other  way  of  putting  myself  face  to  face  with  this 
danger,  I  agreed  that  I  would  read  before  a  public  meeting  to  be 
called  by  the  commissioners,  two  papers,  one  discussing  general  prin- 
ciples of  design  for  works  of  the  kind  in  hand,  and  showing  the 
puerile,  extravagant,  and  wasteful  character  of  much  that  had  been 
proposed  in  contravention  of  these  principles  ;  the  other,  their  appli- 
cation to  the  particular  conditions  of  the  site  to  be  dealt  with,  and 
the  population  to  be  served. 

I  consented,  however,  only  upon  the  promise  of  the  commissioners 
that  certain  gentlemen  should  be  specially  invited  by  them  to  hear 
me,  whose  official  positions  and  whose  duty  of  influence  on  public 
opinion  made  it  particularly  to  be  wished  that  they  should  find  some 
holding-ground  in  the  matter  ;  and  as  it  had  appeared  to  me  that  its 
educational,  sanitary,  and  moral  aspects  particularly  needed  support 
against  motives  of  comparatively  trifling  importance,  I   asked   also 


I 


that  personal  invitations  should  be  given  to  the  teachers,  physicians, 
and  clergymen  of  the  city. 

I  tell  the  result  because  of  its  bearing  upon  a  point  of  direct 
pecuniary  interest  to  you,  which  I  shall  more  distinctly  present  later. 

The  result  was  that  half  an  hour  after  the  time  appointed,  of  a  fine 
autumnal  afternoon,  in  a  hall  for  a  thousand,  in  the  heart  of  the  city, 
time  and  place  being  selected  by  your  commissioners  with  a  view  to 
the  convenience  of  those  invited,  less  than  thirty  persons  (ladies, 
gentlemen,  and  children)  had  come  together.  There  was  not,  I 
believe,  among  them  one  teacher,  one  physician,  or  one  clergyman  ; 
not  one  member  of  the  City  Council  (the  commissioners  excepted)  or 
of  the  executive  departments  of  the  city  government.  Nor  was  there 
one,  as  far  as  I  have  reason  to  suppose,  of  all  those  gentlemen  as  to 
whose  propositions,  demands,  and  questions  my  judgment  had  during 
the  three  previous  years  been  asked,  and  whose  power  to  embarrass 
the  undertaking  I  had  been  led  to  regard  with  concern. 

At  the  end  my  little  audience  kindly  thanked  me  and  asked  for  the 
publication  of  the  papers  read. 

This  request,  with  some  suggestions  as  to  what  might  be  omitted, 
the  commissioners  seconded.  But  it  afterward  became  evident  that 
they  were  not  fully  satisfied  of  its  expediency,  or  that  they  questioned 
if  it  would  be  pleasing  to  the  City  Council.  One  of  the  commis- 
sioners acknowledged  that  he  had  not  himself  been  able  to  follow  my 
argument  at  all  points,  and  that  he  doubted  the  results  to  the  under- 
taking  of  its  pubHcation.  I  understood  his  doubt  upon  finding  that 
another  listener  had  been  so  well  pleased  with  my  efforts  to 
set  forth  kindly  and  candidly  certain  common  and  conventional 
ideas  of  a  park  that  he  had  failed  to  catch  the  argument  by  which  I 
tried  to  show  that  they  were  not,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  be  in  all 
cases  adopted  ;  and  would,  in  fact,  be  applied  to  the  mountain  most 
wastefully  and  extravagantly.  I  was  even  reported  in  a  newspaper 
as  urging  a  proposition  which  I  had  stated  only  that  its  unsuitability 
to  the  circumstances  should  be  evident. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  original  suggestion  that  I  should 
address  you  directly  came  from  the  commissioners,  that  the  meeting 
was  called  by  them,  and  invitations  to  it  given  by  them.     As  I  had 

6 


il 


I  i 


r 


«♦ 


MM 


i 

I 


I 


been  constantly  assured  of  a  great  public  interest  in  the  work,  not, 
it  was  to  be  presumed,  the  inti  rest  of  indolent  unqualified  approval, 
but  a  critical  interest,  inciting  to  thorough  study  and  cautious  ad- 
vance, review,    and    revision,    the    result    was    thought    to    require 
some  explanation,  and  I  was  advised  that  it  was  not  to  be  attributed, 
at  least  not  wholly  to  be  attributed,  to  the  indifference  of  those  in- 
vited, but  to  some  extent,  in  some  cases,  to  a  disposition  to  repress 
any  such  excess  of  eagerness  in  the  matter  as  might  lead  to  hasty  and 
excessive  outlays  during  a  period  of  extreme  business  gloom.     Ex- 
pressions were   quoted  which   seemed    to  imply  that    I  had    been 
regarded  in  the  light  of  a  paid  counsel  of  a  rash  and  extravagant 
policy,  and  that  it  was  presumed  that  all  I  should  have  to  say  would 
be  with  the  purpose  of  keeping  alive  what  would  now  be  termed  a 
park  "  boom,"  or  perhaps  of  aiding  men  who  had  been  speculating 
in  the  effects  upon  the  value  of  neighboring  real   estate  of  the  city's 
expenditures  upon  the  mountain  to  make  better  terms  with  their 
creditors  ;  a  purpose  to  be  discountenanced  by  good  citizens. 

While  these  were  to  be  considered  as  hasty  expressions  of  the  few 
thoughtless  and  uninformed  individuals  making  them,  they  came  into 
association  in  my  mind  with  others  which  had  proceeded  from  warm 
friends  of  the  enterprise,  much  earlier  in  its  histoiy. 

"  We,  who  are  to  pay  the  bills,  have  an  interest  in  economy,  you 
know."  Something  of  that  kind  had  been  said  to  me  often,  in  a 
kindly,  advisory,  and  even  confiding  way.  (Yet  one  of  those  saying 
it,  happening  to  be  a  lawyer,  I  should  not  like  to  think  that  a  like 
implication  advanced  to  him  by  a  client  would  have  been  pleasing.) 

Now,  I  profess,  in  what  I  am  about  to  write,  to  wish  to  commend  a 
policy  of  sound  economy  to  you,  and  if  there  is  the  slightest  dispo- 
sition to  suppose  that  as  a  stranger,  from  whose  pockets  nothing  you 
expend  on  the  property  is  to  come,  or  from  any  supposed  personal 
interests  in  the  early  accomplishment  of  sensational  results,  or  lack 
of  interest  in  what  may  follow,  1  am  disqualified  for  advising  you 
on  questions  of  economy,  or  am  insincere  in  my  profession,  I  should 
like,  not  self-defensively,  but  in  your  defence  against  inconsiderate- 
ness,  to  tell  you  how  the  case  really  stands. 


ll 


^ 


The  management  of  properties  of  the  class  of  that  under  considera- 
tion, it  must  be  premised,  is  a  branch  of  business  unlike  any  in  which 
you  have  hitherto  been  locally  interested.  Judicious  courses  in  it  are 
less  matters  of  intuition  than  in  building  ships,  locomotives,  or  sewers. 
A  servile  adoption  in  it,  under  any  special  circumstances,  of  methods 
in  use  elsewhere  is  seldom  practicable  ;  never  profitable.  And  yet  it 
is  absurd  to  suppose  that  you  can  prudently  strike  out  recklessly  of 
the  experience  of  others. 

I  have  been  thirty  years  engaged  in  the  study  of  the  experience  of 
others;  have  four  times  visited,  for  the  purpose,  the  principal  examples 
of  such  properties  in  Europe;  and  have  practically  followed,  with 
official  opportunities  for  doing  so,  the  management  of  nine  in  America, 
besides  numerous  smaller  ones,  some  being  for  towns  of  much  less 
wealth  than  Montreal. 

I  did  not  seek  the  engagement  which  your  commissioners,  after  I 
had  declined  to  come  to  Montreal  for  the  purpose,  came  to  New 
York  to  make  with  me.  I  was  not  eager  to  take  it,  partly,  I  admit, 
because  of  diffidence  in  my  ability  to  do  justice  to  so  unusual  a  prob- 
lem without  living  for  years  upon  the  ground,  and  personally  watch- 
ing the  development  of  its  singular  opportunities. 

I  was  finally  induced  to  accept  it  by  information  and  assurances 
which,  given  in  good  faith,  were  misleading. 

But  when  I  accepted  it  I  did  so  with  a  sense  of  definite  business 
responsibility,  from  which  it  resulted  that  if  there  has  been  one  man 
among  you  who  has  at  any  time  had  a  wish  to  secure  a  management 
for  the  property  on  a  lower  scale  of  outlay  (for  the  long  run),  or  in 
any  way  with  a  more  economical  motive,  or  one  who  has  appreciated 
the  continuous  weight  of  taxation,  and  the  difficulty  of  maintaining  it, 
which  any  respectable  management  of  the  property  would  involve,' 
more  fully  than  I,  or  who  has  more  habitually,  studiously,  and 
methodically  sought  to  wisely  limit  its  weight  and  secure  adequate 
results  from  what  would  be  continuously  practicable,  I  have  never 
been  offered  the  benefit  of  his  counsel,  in  the  smallest  particular,  of  a 
plan  for  the  purpose,  while  I  have  been  wearied  with  promptings  from 
comparatively  short-sighted,  time-serving,  and  improvident  points  of 
view. 


^ 


Nor,  if  I  can  be  regarded  as  your  professional  adviser  and  an 
honorable  man,  will  it  be  thought  in  the  least  creditable  to  me,  or 
reproachful  to  you  or  any  among  you,  that  this  should  be  so. 

Still,  plainly,  for  sound  counsel's  sake,  the  fact  needs  to  be  better 
understood.  Therefore,  let  me  mention  further  that  the  first  advice  I 
gave  in  the  matter  was  that  parts  of  the  land  pointed  out  to  me,  in 
my  preliminary  visit  to  the  property,  as  that  to  which  it  was  desired 
that  I  should  fit  a  plan,  were  of  comparatively  small  value  for  the  ob- 
jects in  view,  and  that  large  rebates  of  the  purchase-money  might  be 
legally,  honestly,  and  thriftily  secured,  and  considerable  subsequent 
expenditure  avoided,  by  so  managing  the  plan  as  to  leave  them  out. 

Again,  at  the  moment  I  first  put  foot  on  the  ground,  I  pointed  out 
the  difficulty,  danger,  and  extravagance  which  would  result  if  certain 
suggested  "improvements,"  common  in  parks  elsewhere,  but  by  no 
means  essential  to  the  more  important  purpose  of  them,  should  be  at- 
tempted on  the  mountain  ;  and  the  better  to  guard  against  the 
tendency  to  blindly  follow  expensive  and  inappropriate  precedents  in 
this  respect  I  then  urged,  as  I  often  did  afterward,  that  the  term 
park,  as  applied  to  the  mountain,  should  be  discarded,  and  its  older, 
more  dignified,  and  more  wholesomely  suggestive  appellation  preserved 
and  emphasized. 

I  did  not  wait  for  the  hard  times  to  urge  that  all  manner  of  super- 
fluities, and  all  propositions  based  on  a  consideration  of  particular  in- 
terests of  portions  of  the  community  independently  of  all,  should  be 
left  out  of  view.  At  no  time  did  I  advise  the  outlay  of  a  dollar  for  a 
merely  ornamental  object ;  at  no  time  any  building  which  will  not 
be  indispensable  for  the  convenient,  orderly,  and  decent  public  use  of 
the  property  or  for  keeping  its  operating  expenses  on  an  economical 
footing. 

Finally,  it  is  of  record  that  much  of  the  work  done  on  the  moun- 
tain during  the  period  of  my  engagement  would  have  been  done 
more  deliberately,  savingly,  and  at  a  slower  rate  of  expenditure  had 
not  my  advice  been  overruled  by  what  was  supposed  to  be  popular 
pressure  upon  the  Council  and  the  commissioners.  To  make  this 
the  clearer  to  you,  I  refer  below  to  letters  not  intended  by  me  for 
publication,    but  given   to   the   newspapers    by  the   commissioners. 

9 


\4i 


"Why  given,  if  they  were  not  at  the  time  rehictantly  yielding  to  the 
unstudied  judgment  of  uninformed  men  against  their  own  tenden- 
cies of  conviction,  I  know  not. 

I  do  not  mean  to  object  to  such  a  use  of  my  letters.  My  opinions  on 
the  subject  were  at  all  times  your  property.  I  remind  you  of  the 
fact  only  becauses  it  fixes  the  position  in  which  I  stood  when  not  a 
man  of  you,  as  far  as  I  had  reason  to  suppose,  stood  with  me,  and 
thus  makes  manifestly  absurd  the  apprehensions  of  any  who  may  be 
disposed  to  regard  my  present  essay  as  that  of  a  Greek  bringing 
gifts. 

On  the  grounds  thus  sufficiently  set  forth,  I  ask  a  hearing  for  the 
counsel  I  am  now  to  offer  you,  and  I  again  remind  you  that  it  may 
have  something  of  that  claim  upon  your  patience  which  any  poor 
words  may  have,  said  in  behalf  of  the  absent, — in  this  case  the  chil- 
dren and  the  children's  children  of  the  present  Montreal,  over-busy 
with  many  things  besides  the  shaping  of  a  permanent  policy  of  park- 
management. 

Noie.— June  lo,  1876,  a  letter  of  mine  to  the  commissioners  was  published 
(see  Siur  of  that  date)  protesting  that  the  road  on  the  mountain  side  had  been 
so  urged  ahead  as  to  waste  much  material  and  labor  ;  that  any  beauty  to  be 
enjoyed  in  passing  over  it  would  exist  in  spite,  not  at  all  in  consequence,  of 
what  had  been  done  ;  that  a  valuable  opportunity  had  been  lost  forever,  and 
that  such  ill-considered  work  could  never  have  been  allowed  under  the  super- 
vision of  a  man  "  influenced  in  the  least  degree  by  a  sense  of  professional 
responsibility."  The  copy  of  this  letter  in  my  hands  is  introduced  by  an 
editorial  note  that  it  '  demands  the  earnest  consideration  of  the  taxpayers." 
It  concludes  with  specific  recommendations  which  were  adopted  at  the  time  by 
the  commissioners,  6ui  were  overruled  tvithin  a  year  by  the  Council. 

October  s^  1876,  two  letters  were  published  from  me  (see  Gazette) ;  in  the 
first ''  I  strongly  recommend  a  delay"  in  certain  proposed  operations,  and  ad- 
vise instead  "  some  slight  and  inexpensive  improvements."  The  letter  con- 
cludes :  "I  have  not  a  doubt  that  any  other  course  will  require  a  large  expendi- 
ture for  a  result  less  satisfactory."  The  second  is  a  protest  against  intended 
operations,  and  contains  the  following  warning:  "The  necessity  of  making 
the  project  temporarily  popular  is  constantly  urging  a  policy  upon  your  Com- 
mission, which,  if  its  results  could  be  fully  recognized,  would  be  anything  but 
popular.  It  is  most  unfortunate  that  any  attempt  should  be  made  to  improve 
such  a  noble  property  at  all,  while  so  many  elements  of  uncertainty  exist  as  to 
conditions  by  which  its  value  must  be  affected,  and  with  a  policy  toward  it,  on 
the  part  of  the  Council,  so  unfixed  and  uncertain  from  year  to  year." 

An  illustration  may  be  asked  for  of  the  manner  in  which  disconcerting  prop- 
ositions were  .r.^ed.  I  will  tell  of  one,  as  my  memory  serves  about  it  after 
six  or  seven  year  a.    A  bridle-road  was  called  for  on  a  certain  course.    The  only 

f round  on  w^'-h  an  outlay  of  public  money  for  a  bridle-road  u^on  a  park  can 
e  justified  is  that  an  important  part  of  the  population  will  want,  and  cannot 
otherwise  obtain,  a  place  in  which  horses  may  be  ridden  rapidly  without  exces- 
sive jar,  and  that  it  can  be  given  them  at  reasonable  cost,  and  without  putting 

10 


».N 


other  people  to  loss  or  danger.  The  course,  in  this  case,  was  through  a  very 
attractive  part  of  the  property,  and  on  a  line  constantly  crossed  by  those  using 
it  as  a  rambling  and  picnic  ground,  and  it  is  much  resorted  to  by  children,  ft 
is  rocky  and  wooded  ;  and,  as  a  horse,  coming  rapidly  upon  the  soft  surface  of 
a  properly-made  riding-way,  makes  little  noise,  if  the  project  had  been  c-.rried 
out,  lamentable  accidents  could  have  been  avoided  only  by  so  restricting 
speed  on  the  road  as  to  make  it  useless  for  its  purpose,  or  by  depriving  the 
public  in  general  of  the  more  natural,  appropriate,  and  valuable  use  of  an  im- 
portant part  of  the  property.  But,  in  any  case,  the  necessary  grade  would 
have  been  so  steep  that  no  horseman  woulil  have  wished  to  jSut  his  horse  to 
speed  upon  it.  Moreover,  as  the  intention  was  to  take  out  the  natural,  firm 
earth  and  rock,  and  substitute  loose  gravel  to  a  certain  depth  in  order  to  get  a 
yielding  surface,  every  great  storm  sweeping  down  the  mountain  side  would 
nave  made  the  road  a  ditch  or  gully.  To  guard,  as  far  as  practicable,  against 
this,  to  make  necessary  repairs  and  keep  the  road  in  tolerable  condition,  would 
have  been  a  costly  business,  while  its  value  to  the  community  would  have  been 
very  questionable.  Nevertheless,  when  I  first  heard  of  the  proposition  (having 
been  already  at  work  upon  the  problem  of  introducing  a  bridle-road  open  to 
none  of  these  objections),  I  was  told  that  it  was  so  strongly  backed  and  per- 
emptorily insisted  on  that  it  was  feared  that  if  the  commissioners  did  not  set 
about  it  before  agreeing  upon  the  general  plan  the  City  Council  would  compel 
them  to  do  so.  and  one  member  of  the  Council  was  named  as  having  avowed 
his  intention  of  voting  for  nothing  advised  by  tHe  commissioners  until  this  ob- 

t'ect  was  accomplished.    The  commissioners,  however,  fortunately  proved  to 
le  too  ^^  unpractical." 


1 1 


M 


IT. 

As  in  this  affair  you  are  taking  up  a  line  of  business  in  which  you 
have  had  no  local  experience,  and  as  the  special  conditions,  topo- 
graphical and  climatic,  are  so  far  out  of  common  that  judgments 
lightly  formed  upon  superficial  observation  and  partial  information 
are  to  be  trusted  even  less  than  in  most  business,  it  is  best  that  you 
should  see  clearly  that  you  are,  in  fact,  systematically  leaving  more 
in  this  business  than  in  any  other  that  you  have  in  common  to  just 
such  judgments. 

So  far  as  you  know  that  you  are  doing  so,  and  are  deliberately 
convinced  that  it  is  prudent  because  of  the  supposed  trifling  impor- 
tance of  any  thing  at  stake  between  cautious  and  incautious  manage- 
ment, you  and  your  heirs  must  take  the  consequences.  So  far  as  you 
do  not  know  it  I  ask  you  to  look  at  the  facts. 

No  other  branch  of  your  city  business  is  carried  on  without  the  con- 
stant aid  of  men  who  have  made  the  ends  to  be  accomplished  through 
it,  and  the  means  of  reaching  them,  a  subject  of  systematic  study  un- 
der competent  direction.  The  methods  of  your  business,  not  only  in 
courts,  schools,  and  hospitals,  for  instance,  but  in  pavements,  gutters, 
and  sewers,  while  determined,  in  part,  by  judgments  based  on  scrutiny 
of  local  experience  during  long  periods,  are  much  more  determined 
by  what  certain  men  have  learned  to  be  the  conclusions  of  more  thor- 
ough examinations  of  larger  and  wider  ranges  of  experience.  Even 
where  these  men  stand  out  of  sight  in  public  discussions,  they  are  not 
out  of  reach  and  they  are  really  your  main  security  against  falling 
into  inadequate,  uselessly  experimental,  theoretic,  and  impracticable 
courses. 

In  your  business  on  the  mountain  you  have  no  such  precaution 
available  against  insufficiency  and  excess.     The  architects,  engineers, 

12 


\ 


-^^ 


i 


and  craftsmen  whom  you  may  at  times  employ  in  it,  though  they  be 
of  the  highest  standing,  do  not  necessarily  know  more  of  what  its 
distinctive  value  consists  in,  and  in  what  way  numerous  parts  and 
operations  are  to  work  together  to  secure  it,  than  the  surgeon  and 
the  purser,  the  engineer  and  the  steward  of  a  steamship  know  of 
what  passes  in  the  mind  of  the  master  navigator  and  seaman. 

Some  of  you  forgetting  how  much  the  value  of  a  park  must  be  the 
result  of  its  courses  in  growth,  as  affected  by  seasons  and  the 
varying  discipline  of  nature,  may  have  supposed  that  I,  living  in 
New  York,  was  to  supply  what  was  necessary  in  this  respect.  It 
might  almost  as  well  be  supposed  that  a  ship  could  be  prudently  sent 
to  sea  in  charge  of  landsmen  with  the  precaution  only  of  giving 
them  written  sailing  directions. 

I  advised  your  commissioners,  when  they  first  came  to  me  in  New 
York,  that  any  "  plan  "  I  could  furnish  them  would  be  "  waste  pa- 
per "  if  it  were  not  to  be  followed  up  by  a  continuous  work  of  design 
in  detail  by  men  imbued  with  its  leading  motives,  trained  and  firmly 
required  to  steadily  pursue  them  under  contingent  circumstances,  and 
with  reputations  of  value  at  stake  in  the  permanent  results  of  their 
work. 


Noie.—ThG  site  and  the  general  purpose  seemed  to  me  to  oflfer  the  best  op- 
portanity  for  the  exercise  of  original  judgment  and  of  refined  and  delicate 
taste  applied  to  novel  conditions  that  had  ever  been  presented  to  my  profes- 
sion. While  other  engagements  would  have  prevented  me,  had  1  been  asked, 
irora  undertaking  a  resident  superintendence  of  the  work,  I  thought,  upon  the 
assurances  of  the  commissioners  and  the  city  engineer,  that  it  would  be 
practicawe  to  aid  in  its  initiation  in  the  manner  that  1  understood  I  was  asked 
to  do  ;  that  IS  to  say,  to  so  far  advance  the  scheme  as  to  tix  limits  of  economy 
to  what  should  be  attempted  ;  establish  its  leading  aims,  and  determine  the 
general  character  of  the  results  to  be  had  in  view,  leaving  yet  open  to  the  res- 
kI^h  executive  force  a  most  attractive  and  worthy  field  for  the  exercise  of  a 
«,.f.V;i.?'»i  °^-  '^^^'Sn'ng  judgment.  My  duty  I  conceive  to  have  been  to 
^^^  A  "ifin  plot  or  arrangement— the  theme  of  the  work  to  be  afterward 
iniKf  K,",  .Shakespeare  was  not  above  giving  his  best  powers  to  works  thus 
laia  out  by  inferior  men— his  predecessors. 


13 


} 


III. 

Seeing  that  you  lack  for  this  business  an  element  of  security  against 
immature  judgments,  which  you  have  in  special  professional  servants 
for  every  thing  else  of  corresponding  importance,  consider  next  that 
what  are  called  the  commissioners  in  your  case  (the  park  commission- 
ers of  other  cities  are  on  a  different  footing)  are  simply  three  mem- 
bers of  your  elected  Council  asked,  for  the  time  being,  to  give  more 
particular  attention  to  this  branch  of  its  business.  There  is  no  other 
of  which,  when  appointed,  they  know  as  Utile.  (My  acquaintance  wi'.h 
each  of  the  three  first  commissioners  began  with  his  profession  that 
his  sole  qualification  was  a  good  intention.)  If  they  take  hold  as 
men  do  who  are  bent  on  mastering  a  new  business,  they  have 
no  assurance  that  they  will  not  be  superseded  before  they  are 
grounded  in  its  rudiments.  (Two  of  the  three  first  appointed  were  dis- 
placed while  I  was  still  in  conference  with  them.)  They  address  the 
other  members  of  the  Council  with  no  authority  of  their  own  in  the 
matter,  and  with  none  such  as  a  building  committee  derives  from  an 
architect ;  a  committee  on  litigations  from  a  barrister  ;  quarantine 
from  a  physician ;  aqueducts  from  a  hydraulic  engineer  ;  schools 
from  a  teacher  ;  fire  telegraphs  from  an  electric'an  ;  matters  of  fine 
art  from  an  artist ;  and  public  gardens,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  from  a 
gardener. 

Lastly,  to  fully  understand  the  riskiness  of  the  arrangement,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  actual  directing  power  of  these  gentle- 
men is  so  limited  and  uncertain  that  they  cannot  feel  any  strong 
sense  of  responsibility  in  the  business.  They  are  constantly  checked 
in  any  disposition  to  form  cautious  judgments  upon  the  question,  What 
would  best  serve  the  permanent  interests  of  the  city  ?  by  the  intrusion 
of  the  question  :  What  will  suit  the  momentary  disposition  or  fitful 

14 


t\ 


I 


demand  of  more  superficial  observers  and  of  the  Council?  Even  if 
they  enter  upon  courses  marlicd  out  not  only  with  a  good  intention, 
but  with  all  the  knowlcd  -c  and  judtjmcnt  which  they  can.  with  their 
best  efforts,  bring  to  bear,  they  well  know  that  they  arc  liaiile  at  any 
moment  to  be  ordered  out  of  them  through  the  inllucnce  of  men  less 
informed  in  the  premises  and  acting  on  less  mature  reflection. 

If  I  question  wliether  the  judgment  required  for  the  prudent  man- 
agement  of  the  property  is  to  be  secured  by  such  a  method  of  direc 
tion,  it  is  the  viei/iod aXonc  that  I  question.  I  write  with  respect  for 
the  members  of  the  Council  and  the  commissioners  I  have  known. 
If  they  were  the  wisest  and  l)est  men  in  the  world,  and  had  all  given 
years  to  a  study  of  the  subject,  steady,  good  management  would  only 
be  possible  by  inducing  some  few  men  to  act  in  the  matter  with  a 
concentration  of  judgment  as  in  private  business,  and,  as  in  nearly  all 
other  important  public  business,  through  a  more  liberal  delegation 
of  responsibility  and  power. 

But,  of  course,  any  improvement  upon  the  present  method  would 
make  those  in  immediate  management  of  the  property  less  directly 
amenable  to  the  public  will,  and  involve  greater  danger  of  an  abuse 
of  power  for  selfish,  partisan,  factional,  or  local  ends,  and  the  commu- 
nity of  Montreal  may  as  yet  be  so  imperfectly  communified  (if  the 
term  may  be  allowed)  that  the  difficulties  of  administration  to  which 
I  have  pointed  must  be  accepted  as  a  necessity.  But  in  that  case  it 
is  obvious  that  prudent  dealing  with  the  property  can  only  be  hoped 
for  through  strong  convictions  of  the  ends  and  limits  of  purpose  for 
which  it  can  profitably  be  used  on  the  part  of  a  sufficient  number 
of  the  owners  to  lead  the  force  to  which  the  Council.  Commission, 
engineer,  superintendent,  forester,  and  foremen  will  alike  bend  their 
personal  wills— the  force  of  public  opinion. 

So  long  and  so  far  as  such  sound  conviction  and  genuine  concern 
fail  to  be  evident,  is  it  not  certain  that  selfish,  partisan,  and  specu- 
lative ol)jects,  and  puerile,  shallow,  temporising,  spendthrift  interests 
will  have  undue  weight  and  will  overrule  proper  commercial  pru- 
dence  ? 


15 


IV. 

A  Wall  Street  property  was  visited  by  a  mining  engineer  who  found 
capital  pumping  and  hoisting  works,  efficiently  operated  ;  a  shaft  and 
gallery  skilfully  timbered  ;  a  busy  tram,  and,  at  the  end  of  a  long 
drift,  miners  hard  at  work.  "  But,"  said  he,  "  I  see  no  metal." 
"  No,  sir."  "  I  see  no  vein."  "  No,  sir."  "  I  see  no  signs  of  a 
vein."  "No,  sir."  "What  are  you  working  here  for?"  "Two 
dollars  a  day,  sir."  And  his  visit  resulted  in  the  abandonment  of  an 
enterprise  lacking  but  one  thing  of  perfect  business  management, — an 
adequate  purpose. 

Without  constant  reference  to  a  fixed  leading  purpose,  you  can  not 
spend  a  dollar  on  the  mountain  with  any  assurance  that  it  is  not 
wasted.  If  your  leading  purpose  is  trivial,  or  of  but  temporary  con- 
sequence, you  have  already  spent  more  than  you  can  afford  upon  it. 
It  is  childish  to  go  further.  Every  dollar  you  appropriate  will  be  a 
dollar  more  of  inexcusable  extravagance. 

To  open  discussion  upon  the  question.  What  purpose  is  adequate 
to  justify  your  purchase  of  the  property,  the  outlay  you  have  made, 
and  any  further  outlay  you  may  choose  to  make  for  better  turning  it 
to  account  ?  suppose  the  following  proposition  offered  for  your  con- 
sideration — a  proposition  I  do  not  mean  to  sustain,  but  which,  I 
doubt,  will  for  a  moment  be  very  unsatisfactory  to  many  of  you  to 
whom  the  business  is  new  : 

' '  The  value  of  this  city  property  is  to  depend  on  the  degree  in  which 
it  shall  be  adapted  to  attract  citizens  to  obtain  needful  exercise  and 
cheerful  mental  occupation  in  the  open  air,  7oith  the  result  of  better 
health  and  fitness  in  all  respects  for  the  trials  and  duties  0/  lift ;  with 
the  result  also,  necessarily,  of  greater  earning  and  tax-paying  capacities, 

16 


I 


.t_- 


f'  that  in  the  cud  the  im'fstment  xvill  he,  in  this  respect,  a  commercially 
profitable  one  to  the  city." 

Taking  this  as  a  definition  of  your  purpose,  roads  and  walks  will 
be  so  made  to  and  on  the  mountain  as  to  give  the  readiest  access  to  its 
more  important  points  of  view  and  objects  of  interest,  and  to  make 
exercise  convenient  and  agreeable.  Trees  will  l)e  removed  when  of 
iigiv  forms,  threatening  to  fall  from  decay,  or  when  they  too  much 
interrupt  distant  prospects  ;  trees  planted  where  needed  for  shading 
and  ornamenting  the  roads,  walks,  and  points  of  view.  Staircases, 
seats,  shelters,  and  ilrinking-fountains  will  be  i)rovided  to  make  the 
taking  of  air  and  exercise  more  convenient,  and  they  will  be  so  designed 
and  placed  as  to  form  in  themselves  additional  objects  of  attraction 
and  agreeably  hold  the  attention.  If,  through  private  liberality  or  by 
public  subscription,  as  has  occurred  in  most  parks,  statues,  fountains, 
sculptural  memorials  of  men  or  events,  or  other  ol)jects  of  art  or 
scientific  interest  can  be  obtained,  they  will,  as  usual,  be  given  such 
prominent  position  as  will  present  them  to  the  best  advantage.  So 
also  as  to  buililings,  such  as  museums,  prospect-towers,  club-houses, 
and  fanciful  houses  of  entertainment. 

It  will  be  obvious  that  with  the  general  purpose  thus  stated,  and 
the  policy  growing  out  of  it,  cheapness  of  management  might  easily 
be  had.  All  required  roads  might  be  ordered,  for  example,  almost  as 
easily  as  so  many  miles  of  iron  piping.  The  laying  out  and  building 
of  them  is  but  a  common  engineering  operation.  In  like  manner, 
monuments  and  architectural  works,  as  easily  for  the  mountain  as  for 
a  cemetery  or  a  garden.  Most  of  the  work  otherwise  called  for  cor- 
responds closely  with  that  which  can  generally  be  got  in  private  life 
out  of  any  good  hired  man,  well-directed,  with  an  occasional  lift  from 
a  jobbing  gardener  or  florist.  What  more  may  be  wanted  at  times  in 
particular  constructions  is  an  every-day  alTair  of  architects,  masons, 
carpenters,  paviors,  and  painters. 

To  manage  the  mountain,  with  this  theory  of  its  value  in  view, 
would  require  more  of  a  man's  time  and  thought,  because  the  opera- 
tions would  be  larger  and  should,  perhaps,  be  more  substantial  and 
*  more  refined  than  those  of  an   ordinary  private  lawn  and  door-yard, 
but  only  that ;  nothing  essentially  different   from  what  hundreds  of 

17 


you  are,  every  summer,  doing  for  yourselves  without  any  deep  ab- 
sorption of  purpose  ;  in  fact,  without  interruption  of  your  regular  and 
more  serious  avocations,  without  special  study,  and  rather  in  a  rec- 
reative and  care-free  humor. 

And  the  fact  that  such  an  estimate  of  what  thought  is  wanted  for 
the  mountain  slides  easily  into  the  ordinary  courses  of  life,  that  it 
satisfies  a  common  form  of  self-esteem,  and  suits  established  mental 
habits,  makes  it  hard  to  lay  aside  even  though  it  be  seen  to  em- 
body a  fallacy. 

That  it  does  embody  a  fallacy  will  be  clear  to  every  man  of  you  if 
he  ask  himself  what  would  be  the  difference  of  attractive  effect 
—literally  speaking— if  for  that  object  which  he  has  found  most  at- 
tractive, tree,  flower-bed,  or  fountain,  in  the  garden  or  fore-court, 
which  is  altogether  the  most  attractive  among  all  those  which  he  is  in 
the  habit  of  passing,  there  should  be  substituted  some  fine  morning  a 
Punch  and  Judy  show,  or  a  hog  with  its  face  shaved,  dressed  in  a 
woman's  cap  and  cloak,  seated  in  an  arm-chair  facing  the  street  ? 

The  truth  is  that  with  no  shrewder  purpose  than  the  proposition  I 
hnve  stated  represents,  not  half  the  dividends  which  the  property 
may  be  profitably  made  to  yield,  will  be  attainable. 


i8 


t  ■ 


The  fir!;t  step  toward  a  safe  conclusion  as  to  the  general  purpose 
to  be  had  in  view  will  be,  in  this,  as  it  would  in  any  other  business,  to 
determine  what  the  situation  puts  economically  out  of  the  question. 

Suppose  that  the  owners  of  a  vacant  lot  with  a  narrow  frontage  on 
an  important  business  street  were  about  to  determine  what  to  build 
upon  it.  These  stated  conditions  of  space,  frontage,  and  situation 
would  at  once  rule  out  two  large  classes  of  buildings  :  first,  such  as 
would  be  inadequate  to  the  value  of  the  ground— a  cottage,  for  exam, 
pie  ;  second,  such  as  the  ground  would  be  inadequate  to  sustain,  as  a 
hotel,  an  iron  foundry,  or  a  theatre. 

So,  as  to  che  site  for  a  park.  If  a  city  has  a  large  area  of  level 
prairie  it  can,  without  excluding  or  cramping  provisions  for  other  park 
purposes,  provide  great  breadths  of  tranquil  scenery  with  parade, 
lacrosse,  cricket,  archery,  tennis,  and  croquet  grounds,  all  in  excellent 
fashion  at  small  cost,  the  landscape  motives,  and  others  in  which  the 
whole  community  has  a  direct  interest,  harmonizing  with  the  special 
motives  of  recreation  of  particular  classes.* 

^  But  any  attempt  to  form  picturesque  scenery  through  abrupt  varia- 
tions  of  surface,  not  to  be  puerile  in  its  results,  will  be  costly  and  to 
aim  at  having  an  outlook  comparable  with  that  you  have  already 
obtained  on  the  mountain  will  be,  if  not  impossible,  ridiculously  ex- 
travagai.t.f 


1,1    ,  •  u.         Leyden  they  were  determined  to  have  a  hill  too     Great  lahnr 
neighbor  .W''c?n»R'"'' f"^"^  ^l*^''^-  ''^y '^^^  been  scooped  oufoMhe 

19 


I 


^ 


,*1 


1 


Having  chocfii  ground  everywhere  broken  and  with  but  scanty 
breadths  of  thin  soil  at  any  point  between  its  rocks  your  case  is  the 
reverse.  Economy  begins  with  fixing  upon  a  plan  and  a  permanent 
policy  in  the  business  which  looks  to  nothing  which  could  be  better 
accomplished  at  much  less  cost  on  less  rugged  ground.  True,  this 
restricts  the  value  of  your  park.  But  consider  the  compensation  :  for 
example,  in  this  one  respect. 

In  parks  at  Liverpool,  London,  Paris,  Milan,  Genoa,  and  other 
cities,  there  is  a  good  deal  of  rock  brought  with  cost  from  a  distance, 
or  of  artificial  rock  made  of  materials  brought  from  a  distance,  set  as 
facings  to  mounds  laboriously  built  up  so  as  to  obtain  scraps  and 
ravellings  of  scenery  which  will  seem,  under  the  circumstances,  to 
have  a  flavor  of  this  same  quality  of  ruggedness.  The  rock,  in  itself, 
is  generally  ugly  ;  the  mounds  are  hills  suitable  for  a  doll's  pleasure- 
ground,  but,  when  aided  by  adequate  vegetation  skilfully  selected  and 
disposed,  the  comparatively  insipid  pictiiresquishness  of  the  result  is 
generally  regarded  by  those  who  pay  for  the  work  as  economically 
purchased. 

Of  raw  material  of  this  quality  you  have  already  on  your  ground  a 
wealth  beside  which  all  that  these  older  cities  have  accumulated  is 
poverty.  At  slight  cost  you  may  soon  obtain  results  of  the  same  class 
beside  which  theirs  will  be  backwoods  makeshifts. 

I  know  that  there  is  a  prevalent  notion  that  you  must  make  the 
best  of  such  opportunities  as  you  find  upon  your  site  for  purposes  to 
which  it  is  not  generally  well  adapted,  but  you  cannot  build  a  policy 
on  this  basis  without  bringing  aims  in  which  success  can  never  be 
satisfactory  into  conflict  with  aims  through  which  any  adequate  re- 
turn for  your  total  outlay  must  mainly  cotne. 

In  short,  the  conclusive  objection  to  the  entire  tendency  of  man- 
agement with  which  I  am  now  contending,  and  the  drift  to  which 
may  perhaps  be  deeper  and  stronger  and  more  insidious  than  you  can 
readily  realize,  is  that  it  favors  a  constant  waste  of  what,  if  preserved, 
will  unquestionably  be,  in  the  long  future  of  the  city,  the  two  most 
important  elements  of  value  in  this  property.  For,  if  you  think  of 
it,  the  reasoning  out  of  which  it  grows,  while  allowing  some  value  to 
natural  objects  of  beauty  (trees,  for  example)  with  reference  to  the 

20 


^ 


f<- 


purpose  of  a.r  and  exercise,  first,  wholly  disregards  the  pervadine 
charm  of  natural  scenery  (scenery  in  distinction  from  scenes)  with 
reference  to  this  purpose,  and  the  result  of  pursuing  it  would,  by  the 
mterposition  of  a  variety  of  objects  appealing  to  a  different  exercise 
of  taste,  greatly  restrict  if  not  wholly  pervert  such  charm  •  then 
second.  It  wholly  leaves  out  of  account  an  element  of  value  much 
more  important  to  be  borne  in  mind  thaa  inducements  to  take  air 
and  exercise-more  important  because  much  less  available  to  the 
city  by  other  means  than  the  improvement  of  the  mountain-the 
mtntistc  value  of  charming  natural  scenery. 

That  this  last  element  of  value  in  the  mountain  is  one  for  practi- 
cal consideration,  that  it  is  a  matter  of  dollars  and  cents  to  you  quite 
as  much  as  air  and  exercise,  I  will  show  in  the  next  chapter 

Here  ,t  remains  to  be  affirmed  that  the  ooportunities  and  advan- 
tages for  producing  certain  charms  of  natural  scenery  which  you 
nold  as  yet  inert  and  unproductive  in  the  mountain,  are  such 
as  are  possessed  by  no  other  city  in  any  ground  held  for  a  public 
park  To  allow  it  to  be  so  used  and  dealt  with  as  that  these  elements 
of  value  shall  be  lost,  will  be  a  scandalous  extravagance 


21 


II 

II 


^V;\ 


I 


S    f.( 


•r  I 


VI. 

It  is  a  ^reat  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  value  of  charming  natural 
scenery  lies  wholly  in  the  inducement  which  the  enjoyment  of  it  pre- 
sents to  change  of  mental  occupation,  exercise, -and  air-taking.  Beside 
and  above  this,  it  acts  in  a  more  directly  remedial  way  to  enable  men  to 
better  resist  the  harmful  influences  of  ordinary  town  life,  and  recover 
what  they  lose  from  them.  It  is  thus,  in  medical  phrase,  a  prophy- 
lactic and  therapeutic  agent  of  vital  value  ;  there  is  not  one  in  the 
apothecaries'  shops  as  important  to  the  health  and  strength  or  to  the 
earning  and  tax-paying  capacities  of  a  large  city.  And  to  the  mass 
of  the  people  it  is  practically  available  only  through  such  means  as 
are  provided  through  parks. 

This  is  simply  a  fact.  If  we  want  to  go  behind  the  fact — from  the 
physician  to  the  metaphysician — we  must  begin  by  reflecting  that  a 
charm  is  something  that  acts,  we  know  not  how,  to  make  us  in  some 
way  different  from  what  we  should  otherwise  be  ;  that  is,  it  acts  other- 
wise than  through  our  re? son. 

This  is  the  primary  superstitious  idea  of  a  charm — of  what  is  charm- 
ing. We  can  apply  the  term  rationally  to  scenery  only  because  of  a 
common  experience  that  certain  scenery  has  a  tendency  to  lift  us  out 
of  our  habitual  condition  into  one  which,  were  the  influence  upon 
us  stronger  and  the  moods  and  frames  of  mind  toward  which  it 
carried  us  more  distinctly  defined,  we  should  recognize  as  poetic. 
Let  us  say  that  for  the  time  being  the  charm  of  natural  scenery 
tends  to  make  us  poets.  There  is  a  sensibility  to  poetic  inspiration 
in  every  man  of  us,  and  its  utter  suppression  means  a  sadly  morbid 
condition.  Poets,  we  may  not  be,  but  a  little  lifted  out  of  our  ordi- 
nary prose  we  may  be  often  to  our  advantage. 

To  compare  our  small  measures  with  larger  let  us  take  a  recorded 
experience  of  a  full-grown  poet. 

22 


k    --'^ 


Wordsworth  (only  greater  in  poetic  sensibility  than  any  one  of  us, 
not  differently  organized,  not  differently  affected  by  medicine)  came 
home  from  a  painful  experience  in  France  after  its  great  revolution, 
sick,  broken  down,  unfit  for  business.  Everything  was  going  wrong 
with  him.  His  sister,  Dorothy,  of  whom  it  has  been  well  said  that 
she  was  the  greater  poet  of  the  two,  only  that  she  was  noi  a  literarv 
poet,  watched  his  symptoms,  saw  the  nature  of  his  trouble,  and 
divined  the  cure.  She  persuaded  him  to  let  her  guide  him  into  the 
midst  of  charming  scenery,  and  to  subject  himself  for  a  time  to  its 
influence  ;  "  and  thus,"  says  Doctor  Shairp,  telling  the  story,  "  be- 
gan that  sanative  process  which  restored  him  to  his  true  self  and 
made  that  blessing  to  the  world  he  was  destined  to  become." 

These  terms  (sanative,  restoring)  are  not  metaphorical.  They 
testify  precisely  that  the  charm  of  natural  scenery  is  an  influence  of 
the  highest  curative  value  ;  highest,  if  for  no  other  reason,  because  it 
acts  directly  upon  the  highest  functions  of  the  system,  and  through 
them  upon  all  below,  tending,  more  than  any  single  form  of  medica- 
tion we  can  use,  to  establish  sound  minds  in  sound  bodies — the  foun- 
dation of  all  wealth. 

For  practical  purposes,  such  as  we  are  now  discussing,  it  is  not 
necessary  to  better  understand  how  this  influence  works  ;  it  is  not 
necessary  that  we  should  agree  upon  a  theory  of  it,  but  some  may 
like  to  feel  their  way  toward  an  idea  on  the  subject,  with  such  aid  as 
Doctor  Shairp  attempts  to  give  in  the  following  comments  on  the  case 
of  Wordsworth  : 


■^u^'^'T  "^°"''"'^^"K  that  study  of  nature  (not  with  the  science  of  the  botanist 
or  the  florist,  but  the  poet)  he  at  last  came  to  hold  with  conscious  conviction 
what  he  had  at  first  felt,  hardly  knowing  that  he  felt  it,  that  Nature  had  a  life 
ot  her  own,  which  streamed  through  and  stimulated  his  life  ;  a  spirit  which  in 
Itself  mvisible,  spoke  through  visible  things  to  his  spirit.  ' 

"  That  the  characteristics  of  this  spirit  were  calmness  which  stilled  and  re- 
freshed man. 

"  Sublimity  which  raised  him  to  noble  thoughts. 

"  Tenderness  which,  while  stirring  in  the  largest  and  loftiest  things,  con- 
descends to  the  lowest;  is  with  the  humblest  worm  and  weed  as  much  as  in  the 
greatest  movements  of  the  elements  and  of  the  stars. 

"  Above  all,  nature  he  now  saw  to  be  the  shape  and  image  of  right  reason- 
reason  in  its  highest  sense,— emboH'  ^  <,nd  made  visible  in  order  ;  stability  •  in 
conformity  to  eternal  law.  The  perception  .A  this  satisfied  his  intellect,  calmed 
and  soothed  his  heart."— 7"^^  Poetic  Interprttation  of  Nature,  p.  u^q. 

It  may  be  added  that  this  influence  is  such  with  /efercnce  to  the  highest 
form  of  the  prosperity  of  a  community  that  many  divines  have  referred  to  it 

23 


sma 


If 


.11 


i   « 


dVt""lv'°cToS/%^7'^;^'■'^?^'?^°fe^^^  «»igio"s  nurture  more 

"  „,,",V^  ^  ?u.    S    •    .''•"ce  the  disciples  were  led  out  of  the  town  to  th^ 
Tn.^J-J'"'' '°  ^^"  ''^y  ^^^  children  of  Jerusalem  are  led  to  the  same  hTch  olive 
groves),  men  have  ever  found  "  tongues  m  trees  books  ^  r..nnfn«^,r«iiX 
sermons  in  stones.;'    Moreover,  as  olorge  Herbert  said  of  the  work  o°  the 
time/"^  poet."    ,t  may  happen  that  tBe  word  thus  preached  Thall  some- 

"  T~*'"'^  him  who  a  sermon  flies, 
A«,,ft,-,       •*     /T        And  turn  delight  into  a  sacrifice." 
-  Whnf  ^'^"*"  ^^  A.  Symonds,  in  Fortnightly  Review)  scys  : 
What  Science  IS  not  called  on  to  supply,  the  fervor  and  the  nietv  that 

^    ,     ,  '  I"  or  I  have  learned 

To  look  on  nature,  not  as  in  ihe  hour 

Of  thoughtless  youth  ;  but  hearing  oftentimes 

The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity. 

Nor  harsh  nor  grating,  though  of  ample  power 

To  chasten  and  subdue.    And  I  have  felt 

A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 

Of  elevated  thoughts  :  a  sense  sublime 

Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 

Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting   uns. 

And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air 

And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  : 

A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 

All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 

And  rolls  through  all  things.'  " 


I  V^iS 


■It 

mI 

I'll 


24 


i 


Ml 


"  .        fa 


VII. 

The  possession  of  charming  natural  scenery  is  a  form  of  wealth  as 
practical  as  that  of  wholesome  air,  pure  water,  or  sunlight  unob- 
structed by  smoke  and  fog  ;  as  practical,  then,  as  that  of  sewers, 
aqueducts,  and  pavements.  And  whatever  of  sensible  purpose  there 
was  in  your  selection  of  the  mountain  property  for  a  park,  was  a  pur- 
pose to  increase  your  common  wealth  in  that  form. 

If,  therefore,  in  discussing  questions  of  its  management,  or  in  urging 
what  shall  or  what  shall  not  be  done  with  it  on  the  ground  of  econ- 
omy, you  take,  as  you  generally  have  done,  no  serious  business-like 
account  of  what  makes  for  or  against  poetic  value,  do  you  not  stultify 
yourselves  ? 

What  I  ask  you  to  accept  as  the  true  key  to  economy  on  the  moun- 
tarn  is  the  clear  sense  that  by  the  degree  in  which  people,  while 
resorting  to  it,  will  be  subject  to  the  bracing,  soothing,  tranquilizing 
medication  of  poetical  scenery,  in  that  degree  will  it  be  valuable, 
and  your  investment  in  it  profitable.  In  so  far  as  the  management 
fads  to  constantly  serve  that  end ;  in  so  far,  especially,  as  it  runs 
counter  to  it,  you  must  judge  those  responsible  for  it  as  you  would 
judge  those  responsible  for  leaky  sewers  and  wasting  aqueducts. 

Detei-mine  your  attractions  simply  with  reference  to  air  and  exercise 
mstead  of  to  this  purpose,  and  your  park  will  be  like  a  school  which 
provides  instruction,  but  not  education  ;  a  police  which  aims  at  the 
punishment,  not  the  prevention  of  crime  ;  a  church  aiming  at  a  moral, 
but  not  a  religious  character. 

Yet  it  maybe  as  well  to  conaider  that  if  you  secure  this  all  else  will 
be  added.  The  air  will  not  be  fouled  by  that  which  gives  poetic 
charm  to  the  scenery,  nor  will  exercise  in  it  be  enervating. 


25 


msm^i 


« 


hi? 


t-:' 


•ii 


VIII. 

Soon  after  you  bought  the  property  a  friend  of  mine  said  to  one  of 
your  citizens,  whose  experience  should  make  his  counsel  valuable  in 
your  debates  :  "  You  are  going  to  improve  the  mountain  ?"  "  No," 
was  the  reply;  "we  are  going  to  spoil  it."  This  gentleman  may 
have  had  a  greater  degree  of  foresight  in  one  respect  than  many  of 
you.  Possibly  you  would  not  have  made  your  purchase  if  you  had  all 
as  plainly  seen  that  much  of  what  made  the  property  attractive  to 
you  depended  upon  the  wildness  and  seclusion  of  its  natural 
elements. 

If  it  is  to  be  cut  up  with  roads  and  walks,  spotted  with  shelters,  and 
streaked  with  staircases  ;  if  it  is  to  be  strewn  with  lunch  papers,  beer 
bottles,  sardine  cans  and  paper  collars  ;  and  if  thousands  of  people 
are  to  seek  their  recreation  upon  it  unrestrainedly,  each  according  to 
his  special  tastes,  it  is  likely  to  lose  whatever  of  natural  charm  you 
first  saw  in  it. 

It  is  true,  moreover,  that  when  the  mountain  is  suitably  fitted  for 
public  use  and  traversed  by  gaily-dressed  throngs  of  ladies  and  chil- 
dren, polished  carriages,  and  highly  groomed  and  caparisoned  horses, 
that  much  of  its  original  nature  will  appear  comparatively  rude, 
harsh,  incongnious,  and  dreary. 

What  follows  ?  Surely  not  that  you  should  abandon  your  purpose  ; 
surely  not  that  the  more  money  you  spend  on  improvements  the  less 
value  for  your  purpose  the  mountain  will  have. 

It  follows  only  that  all  that  you  have  seen  and  admired  of  the  old 
work  of  nature  must  be  considered  as  simply  suggestive  of  what  that 
is  practicable,  suitable,  and  harmonious  with  your  purposes  of  large 
popular  use,  nature,  wisely  entreated,  will  give  you  in  place  of 
what  must  be  abandoned. 

26 


'M 


■if 


You  need  to  have  new  mountain  ideals  in  view  ;  ideals  with  more 
not  less,  of  poetic  charm  ;  and  your  roads  and  other  artificial  con- 
structions must  be  made  with  studied  regard  to  that  which  you  thus 
have  before  you,  not  to  what  you  are  necessarily  putting  behind.  To 
accomplish  this  transition  skilfully  and  gracefully  requires,  it  must 
be  admitted,  an  exercise  of  judgment  and  taste  in  a  direction  not 
often  followed  with  commercial  purposes  ;  and  it  must  be  further  ad- 
mitted that  if  you  secure  this  and  yet  cannot,  as  a  community,  find  sat- 
isfaction in  anticipating,  forecasting,  and  watching  the  development  of 
the  new  charm,  and  in  seeing  it  gradually  emerge  from  and  overgrow 
the  ruin  of  the  old,  then  the  gentleman  I  have  quoted  was  in  the 
right,  and  the  policy  was  sound  which  I  presume  him  to  have  since 
followed,  of  opposing  every  measure  of  pretended  improvements  upor 
the  mountain  as,  in  truth,  a  measure  for  spoiling  it.  Indeed,  no  man 
should  account  himself  a  gentleman  to  whom  any  other  course  is  not 
only  repugnant,  but  in  whom  such  measures  do  not  stir  up  a  disposi- 
tion to  something  more  than  idle  grumbling. 

In  short,  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  you  cheated  yourselves  when 
you  bought  the  mountain  for  a  park,  unless  you  were  prepared  to 
have  it  managed  on  principles  applicable  to  works  of  art. 


27 


M 


'I'. 


h 


.^jjjwr 


n: 


IX. 

Before  I  go  further  it  is  perhaps  but  just  that  I  should  still  more 
distinctly  say  that  there  was  never  a  moment's  difference  between 
your  first  board  of  park  commissioners  and  myself  as  to  the  general 
soundness  of  the  views  I  have  been  urging  upon  you.  There  were 
great  departures  from  the  course  which  I  think  those  views  would 
have  prescribed,  but  they  were  always  made  on  grounds  of  expediency 
—-as  a  yielding  to  demands  which  it  would  be  impolitic  to  further 
resist,  and  on  the  principle  that  half  a  loaf  is  better  than  no  bread. 
But  the  fact  is,  if  you  could  be  convinced  of  it,  the  whole  loaf  would 
cost  you  less  than  the  half. 


'I 


28 


X. 

I  have  been  urging  you  to  regard  the  work  to  be  done  in  your  be- 
half  on  the  mountain  as  primarily  a  work  of  art.  and  to  insist  that  in 
this  respect  you  shall  have  the  fair  value  of  what  you  pay  for  it 

I  have  used  the  term  with  some  reluctance,  because  there  is  so"  much 
quackmg  and  s.lly  affectation  afloat  about  art.  that  with  many  sensi- 
ble people  the  simplest  mention  of  it  kmdles  prejudice.  I  know  also 
that  to  speak  of  the  work  before  you  on  the  mountain  as  a  work  of 
art  w,IIagam  seem  "unpractical."  as  looking  to  something  above  the 
heads  of  the  people  and  opening  channels  of  lavish  expenditure 

I  beg  all  who  feel  about  it  at  all  in  this  way  to  let  me  ask.  first,  are 
you  sure  that  .f  you  oppose  art  ever  so  much  you  are  going  to  get  on 
wuhou  a  ?  Are  you  sure,  that  by  a  method  which  compels  an  off- 
hand, slap-dash  way  of  going  to  work  you  escape  quackings  and  affec- 
tations ?  Is  It  not  smart,  shallow.  Jack-of-all-trades  art  that  is  most 
of  all  contemptible  to  you  ?  Can  you  despise  or  wish  to  put  away 
art.  of  which  the  chief  condition  is  a  sincere,  devoted,  and  devout 
application  of  judgment  to  the  purpose  upon  which  it  is  engaged  > 

.nohr ".     ^       .  ''?'''  '^''  "'"'^'^^''  ''  "^^y  "°^  ^«  -  teaching' of 
nobbishness  and  vulgarity  against  which  every  true  man  should  rebel 

that  good  art  is  above  the  heads  of  ti.e  common  people.      Those 

whom  all  accept  as  the  highest  authority  regard  the  highest  art  to  be 

that  which  was  made  for  public  places  and  for  the  use  of  all 

tZ'fr  '"t  \^-T  "'  ''°''^'  °^  "^''  ""^  ^°  ^^'^  d^y.  ^^  the  degree 
that  they  rank  high  or  low  in  the  scale  of  art,  are  they  consoling  and 
cheering  to  generation  after  generation  of  the  poor  and  needy 

Among  thousands  of  college-bred  Scotchmen  not  one  has  shown  as 
high  poetic  sensibility  as  the  ploughboy  Burns,  and  this  sensibility  is 

iTrgdy Vytt.'      "  "^'"^  '°  ^'^  ^'^^"^  °'  "^^"^^^  ^-"-y  ^--^ 

29 


>) 


ll 


•I 


t^; 


This  may  seem  a  contradiction  of  terms.  It  is  not.  When  an 
artist  puts  a  stick  in  the  ground,  and  nature  in  time  makes  it  a  tree, 
art  and  nature  are  not  to  be  seen  apart  in  the  result. 

In  verses  called  out  by  an  enjoyment  of  a  brawling  stream  under 
trees,  the  plougliboy  begs  for  the  jjlanting  of  more  trees,  that  the 
poetic  charm  by  which  he  has  been  inspired  may  be  deepened  by  art.* 

But,  third,  as  to  the  economy  of  art.  You  know  that  the  market- 
value  of  a  literary  work  of  art  (the  psalms  of  David,  the  novels  of 
Scott,  the  idylls  of  Tennyson)  does  not  depend  on  the  amount  of 
paper  and  ink  used  in  them  ;  that  a  work  of  the  painter's  art  is  not 
valued  by  counting  the  cost  of  the  canvas,  pigments,  and  day's  labor 
which  has  been  spent  on  it,  or  a  statue  by  the  cost  of  the  marble  and 
its  cutting.  You  know  also  that  of  the  works  of  two  men,  given  the 
same  subject  to  draw,  paint,  or  carve,  one  representing  no  more 
school-knowledge,  industry,  faithfulness,  or  hand-labor,  only  higher 
art,  will  sell  at  once  for  ten  times  as  much  as  the  other,  and  that  this 
difference  in  market  value  instead  of  lessening  will  increase  century 
after  century. f 

*  Last  (lay  I  crrat  wi  spite  and  teen, 

As  poet  Burns  came  by, 
That  to  a  Hard  I  should  be  seen 

Wi  half  my  channel  dry: 
A  panegyric  rhyme,  1  ween, 

Even  as  I  was  he  shor'd  me  ; 
But  had  1  in  my  glory  been, 

He,  kneeling,  wud  ador'd  me. 

«  «  «  >K 

Would  thou  my  noble  master  please 

To  grant  my  highest  wishes, 
He  '11  shade  my  banks  wi  tow'ring  trees. 

And  bonnie  spreading  bushes. 

Let  lefty  firs,  and  ashes  cool, 

My  lowly  banks  o'erspread, 
Ani  view,  deep  bending  in  the  pool. 

Their  shadows'  wat'ry  bed  ! 
Let  fragrant  birks,  in  woodbines  drest. 

My  craggy  cliffs  adorn  ; 
And,  for  the  little  songster's  nest. 

The  close  embowring  thorn. 

t  The  city  of  Amsterdam  possesses  a  little  picture,  and  1  have  seen  labor- 
ing men  smiling  before  it,  ot  which  it  has  been  lately  written  that  "  it  was  sold 
iu  1766  for  8,000  francs,  and  in  1808,  for  35,000,  and  that  certainly  a  cypher 
added  to  the  last  sum  would  not  be  sufficient  to  buy  it  now."— Holland,  by 
E.  de  Amicis.    New  York  :  Putnam's  Sons. 

30 


1 


There  .s  this,  then,  about  goo.l  art  ;  ii  is  not.  like  bad  art.  to  .o 
out  of  fashion.  Let  your  work  upon  the  mountain  be  directed  by 
sound  art.  and  the  older  the  results  the  more  they  will  be  valued  • 
the  oftener  and  more  familiarly  they  are  seen  the  more  wholesome 
pleasure  will  be  taken  in  them. 

Again,  then,  in  your  choice  of  what  to  do,  have  some  re.rard  for 
your  heirs.  ^ 


Sx 


i   : 


!} 


it 


h 


\\ 


XI. 

An  incident  occurred  in  the  early  work  upon  the  mountain  which 
gave  rise  to  some  discussion  in  which  a  proposition  was  more  or  less 
definitely  advanced  or  its  soundness  assumed,  which  may  be  thus 
stated  ; 

"  Suppose  a  road  is  to  be  made  along  a  naturally  wooded  and 
otherwise  attractive  hillside,  and  it  is  an  object  to  give  those  who  pass 
over  the  road  as  much  as  practicable  of  the  enjoyment  of  it?  natural 
scenery,  then  the  simpler  the  means  taken  to  obtain  desirable  courses 
and  grades  ;  the  more  strictly  operations  are  confined  to  the  space 
necessary  to  obtain  them  ;  and  the  less  cutting  and  covering  of  the  ad- 
jacent ground,  the  better.  The  highest  art  consists,  under  such  cir- 
custances,  in  making  the  least  practicable  disturbance  of  nature  ;  the 
highest  refinement  in  a  refined  abstinence  of  effort  ;  in  the  least  work, 
the  most  simple  and  the  least  fussy  and  pottering," 

To  see  the  crudity  of  this  dictum,  consider  first,  what  must  neces- 
sarily result  from  proceeding  upon  it,  and,  to  make  the  principle 
plainer,  suppose  that  the  hillside  is  a  little  steeper  and  a  little  more 
perfectly  furnished  with  old  wood  than  was  the  case  on  the  mountain. 

You  lay  out  as  an  engineering  affair  what  is  the  most  direct,  con- 
venient, z-vA  economical  route  with  reference  to  the  purpose  of 
transportation.  You  begin  construction  by  removing  the  trees  in 
the  way  of  a  road  of  the  prescribed  breadth.  You  then  have  two 
broken  lines  of  spindling  trunks  supporting  sprawling  limbs,  which 
sustain  meagre  tufts  of  feeble  foliage,  not  at  all  natural,  for  if  the 
openiiig  had  been  a  natural  one,  such  as  might  have  been  caused,  for 
example,  by  a  watercourse,  or  a  long  narrow  outcrop  of  rock,  the 
trees  would  have  grown  beside  it  in  a  way  much  more  effective  for 
your  purpose  ;  a  much  more  beautiful  way. 

32 


!     X 


Next  ,o  oblain  a  plane  surface  for  your  road,  you  break  into  the 
slope  of  the  mountain  on  one  si<le,  and  bank  out  on  .he  other  You 
then  have  two  steep,  fonnal,  unnatural  banks,  one  above  you  wh!" 
way,  the  other  below  it.  Next,  as  you  wit.  i.ave  cut  off  a  thi  d  If  tht 
roo  s  of  the  trees  growing  above,  and  b.anked  over  a  third  of  the  oou 
of  those  growtng  .mmediately  below,  and  established  conditionVfav 

from  the  orcumslances  to  which  the  bordering  trees  are  habitnatedfn 
respect  to  motsture,  food,  frost,  and  light,  will  lessen  their  viX 

them  'Z  M "''"  r   r  ■  "  P"'"^  "'  """'  "^  "■'  "^'l-  °f  -"-''of 
them,  the  decay  of  thetr  roots,  and  through  the  elTect  of  freezing 

hawtng  washtng,  and  vegetable  growth  and  decay,  your  banks  3' 
ake  natural  forms  more  or  less  agreeable.     Of  the  trees  that  do  Z 
soon  d,e,  some  „,11  sprout  out  in  an  eccentric  new  growth  ■  sucke- 
W.11  be  thrown  out  from  the  roots  of  others;  and,  here  a;d  ther 
young  trees  and  bushes  will  grow  up  from  seed  i;  front  of  theTd 

In  this  way  the  first  rude  aspect  of  your  work  will  be  partly  oblit- 
rated,  partly  obscured,  and  a  degree  of  natural  charm  obtained      f 
the  crcumstances  are  favorable  it  may  even  be  accounted  a  high  de 
gee  of  charm.     And  ye,  it  will  have  been  folly,  worse  than  the  folly 

sulfs  t     '•  :  T'  ''""=  '"  ""^  -"^  ^<  ""^  -'-  °f  'he     ' 

vou  '  wl  ;'r"  "       ""  """'  '"--W^-'e  grades  and  courses  for 

iZ.      7  T^'T-  "'"  *-'"P'=  ""=  ^'"^^  "'  °"«  '"  ^"<^h  desirable 
orms  as  frost,  and  rain,  and  root  growths  might  chance  to  give  them 

aft  r  many  years.  You  can  do  more.  You  can,  by  a  little  forecasT 
make  them  a.  one  point  bolder  and  more  picturesque  in  n,  urTy  ' 
fi.tmg  buttress  of  rock  than  nature,  working  alone,  would  be  able  to 
do.  By  msertmg  little  pockets  of  leaf-mould  about  this  rock  and 
proper  seeds  or  plants,  you  can  then  prevail  upon  nature  to  dres    U 

Ts^n.  a  n  n  T  "°  m"'"  '"""=  "'  '°''='S=  ^"^  '='-">■  "^e  inter- 
esting than  nature  would,  ,n  a  century,  otherwise  provide.     You  can 

puun  he  way  of  immediate  growth  behind  this  rock  a  broad  da^ 

mass  of  low  mouutatn  pine,  or  a  pensive,  feathery  and  brooding  hem- 

ock,  educated  to  a  character  which  nature,  left  alone,  gives  to  one  of 

..s  speces  .n  a  thou,.and,  to  supply  the  degree 'of  canopy  and  shadow 

33 


r'ioi^i 


i' 

W 

I. 


'it 


I 


•    i 


M 


■}^ 


which  will  be  most  effective  for  your  purpose.  And,  this  being  done, 
you  are  finally  relieved  of  the  nuisance  and  expense  which  the  natural 
washing  down  of  your  abrupt  bank  would  have  otherwise  entailed. 

Then,  at  another  point,  you  can  cut  back  on  the  crest  of  your  bank 
and  make  it  gentle  and  graceful,  with  long  double  curves  of  the  sur- 
face, dressed  with  low,  soft  verdure  and  decked  with  modest  wild 
flowers. 

You  can  cut  out  the  feebler  and  uglier  of  the  old  trees  (their  ugli- 
ness is  due  in  many  cases  to  the  falling  of  others  upon  them  and  other 
unhappy  accidents) ;  shorten  in  the  tops  of  others  more  promising, 
but  which  have  been  strained  upward  in  feeble  forms  to  avoid  suffo- 
cation in  the  crowd.  You  can  enrich  the  soil  and  induce  a  lower 
growth  upon  them  ;  and  you  can  everywhere  plant  at  once  such  trees, 
shrubs,  and  herbage  as  will  best  harmonize  with  what  you  select  to 
stay  of  this  old  wood,  and  best  carry  out,  grace,  and  enrich  the  neces- 
sary inanimate  detail  of  the  immediate  road  border. 

Thus,  you  can  rapidly  establish  a  new  face  to  the  wood  which  will 
in  truth  be  equally  natural  in  aspect,  and,  whether  regarded  as  the 
foreground  of  a  distant  view  or  looked  at  closely  for  its  local  beauty, 
far  more  charming  than  the  best  that  nature,  uttencouraged,  would 
much  more  slowly  give  you. 

Why  is  it  more  irrational  to  thus  sympathetically  cooperate  with 
nature  for  the  end  which  you  have  in  view  in  your  use  of  this  prop- 
erty, than  for  that  of  raising  apples,  corn,  or  buckwheat,  where  nature, 
left  to  herself,  would  not  provide  them  ? 

And  yet  the  process  I  have  here  imagined,  of  laying  out  a  road,  de- 
termining its  courses  and  grades  with  no  regard  to  scenery,  and  then 
adapting  scenery  to  them,  is  by  no  means  a  completely  rational  or 
economical  one. 

Second,  then,  sound  art,  following  sound  sense  and  sound  economy, 
will  require,  at  the  first  step,  and  at  every  step  afterward,  a  forecast 
of  the  best  attainable  ultimate  results,  and  in  view  of  th«im  will  waive 
a  little  of  directness  here,  a  little  of  grade  there,  so  as  to  spare  an  in- 
teresting group  of  trees,  or  a  bold  rock,  and  place  them  at  such  a 
distance  from,  and  in  such  relation  of  elevation  to,  the  eye  of  those 
passing   on  the  road,  as  to  enhance  their  value.     Sound  sense  and 

34 


l^ 


1 


economy  will  make  a  similar  concession  in  view  of  the  poverty  of 
some  broad,  flat,  uninteresting  body  of  rock  ;  bending  the  road  slightly 
from  its  direct  course,  or  carrying  it  up  a  little  more  rapidly  with  a 
view  either  of  putting  the  rock  out  of  sight  under  the  road,  or  of  leav- 
ing sufficient  beds  of  soil  for  the  growth  of  plantations  to  cover  it. 

This,  then,  is  the  precept  which  a  more  mature  study  of  art  would 
have  reached.  A  road  must  be  located  not  alone  with  reference  to 
economy  of  construction  in  respect  to  convenience  of  passage 
from  one  point  to  another,  but  with  reference  to  economy  in 
the  ultimate  development  of  resources  of  poetic  charm  of  scenery  ;  and 
these  resources  must  be  considered  comprehensively  and  interactingly 
with  reference  to  the  entire  property. 

This  is  not  simply  a  requirement  of  art  over  and  above  the  re- 
quirements of  mere  engineering,  but,  as  with  reference  to  the  man- 
ner in  which  the  first  road-making  on  the  mountain  was  done  diff"er- 
ently  from  that  I  had  provided  for,  is  a  requirement  of  sound  in  dis- 
tinction from  unsound  art ;  of  good  art  over  bad.  Those  who  urge 
the  rejection  of  the  good  and  the  adoption  of  the  bad,  under  the  im- 
pression that  something  is  to  be  thus  gained  in  economy,  are  the  real 
spendthrifts  and  prodigals.  And  the  principle,  thus  illustrated,  applies 
to  every  thing  to  be  done — quite  as  much,  for  instance,  to  walks,  stair- 
cases, seats,  shelters,  shades  (and  shade  trees),  to  gutters,  gratings, 
drinking-fountains,  and  horse-watering-places,  as  to  wheel-ways;  most 
of  all  to  any  necessary  buildings. 


35 


"^■"fiTTr,,- 


,.,I,4,JI,)...,...I-J.^ 


SE9 


!■'■ 


s- 


Ik 


.Jf^ 


'<;. 


'111. 

'   I!    ^1 


XII. 

There  are,  upon  the  mountain,  spaces  of  raw,  barren  surface,  pos- 
sessing no  element  of  natural  beauty,  and  in  no  way  agreeably  inter- 
esting ;  simply  blots.  Indeed,  it  must  be  confessed  that,  in  parts, 
most  even  of  the  trees  are  rather  forlorn  objects  ;  forlorn  both  as  in- 
dividuals and  in  their  grouping.  Many  on  the  heights  are  of  kinds 
which,  for  any  thing  like  their  full  natural  beauty,  as  they  reach  ma- 
ture years,  require  a  rich  soil,  genial  climate,  and  freedom  to  stretch 
widely  ouJ^  in  root  and  branch.  In  parts  of  the  mountain  they  lack 
each  one  of  these  conditions,  and,  consequently,  bear  all  the  marks  of 
severe  exposure,  of  Arctic  temperature,  of  having  grown  in  shallow, 
rock-bottomed  pockets  of  poor  soil,  alternately  arid  and  water-soaked, 
and  of  barely  surviving  in  a  struggle  for  existence  one  with  another, 
and  all  against  those  vermin  which  attack  feeble  vegetable  life. 

Many  are  decrepid  with  wounds  and  premature  old  age,  and  these, 
while  they  cannot  possibly  hold  out  many  years,  and  are  now  falling, 
or  casting  their  limbs  with  mortal  injury  to  others  in  every  storm,  are 
yet  cramping,  starving,  and  suffocating  the  more  promising. 

The  error  in  art,  referred  to  in  the  last  chapter,  would  preserve  and 
maintain  this  aspect  of  mountain  scenery,  simply  because  it  is  a  na- 
tural aspect,  and  does  not  wholly  exclude  the  charm  of  nature.  Would 
it  not  be  as  rational  for  a  farmer  to  say  that  because  his  cows  some- 
times pick  a  little  food  out  of  boggy  vegetation  he  will  not  drain  the 
ground  and  get  a  field  of  rich,  corn-producing  soil  ? 

By  a  little  improvement  of  the  elements  of  growth  ;  removing  un- 
suitable and  hopelessly  debilitated  trees  ;  heading  down;  healing  the 
wounds  ;  balancing  and  protecting  the  more  sturdy;  planting  low  and 
specially  hardy  conifers  and  underwood  in  the  northern  and  western 
borders,  and  gradually  developing  wind-breaks ;  introducing  in  each 

36 


r:; 


w 


available  situation  trees  and  shrubs  distinctively  adapted  to  the  cir- 
cumstances ;  protecting  all  from  fire,  vermin,  and  the  violence  of  man, 
there  is  not  the  least  ground  for  doubt  that  a  great  and  happy  change  in 
the  general  aspect  of  even  the  most  forlorn  localities  would  be  brouglit 
about ;  a  change  giving  a  large  return  for  the  necessary  investment. 

Nor  is  it  to  be  apprehended  that  the  new  aspect  would  be  less 
natural,  or  less  mountain-like,  or  in  any  respect  less  valuable,  than  that 
which  it  would  supersede.     It  would  surely  be  much  more  so. 

The  most  common  trees  on  the  more  exposed,  dry,  barren  parts  of  the 
mountain,  are  such  oaks  as  under  congenial  circumstances  are  the 
stateliest  of  all  northern  trees.  Examine  them  closely  and  (excepting 
the  few  white  oaks,  and  these  only  where  they  have  been  a  little  fa- 
vored in  respect  to  room)  you  will  hardly  find  one  that  does  not  ap- 
pear out  of  place,  deformed,  mutilated  in  its  trunks  and  limbs, 
scraggy,  and,  in  the  heat  of  summer,  weak  and  sickly  in  foliage. 
These  are  not  picturesque  and  interesting,  as  characteristic  mountain 
trees  often  are,  through  their  ingenious  and  successful  efforts  to  adapt 
themselves  to  trying  conditions,  but  have  the  fixed  sad  look  of  un- 
acclimated  emigrants,  hopelessly  depressed  by  conditions  foreign  to 
their  inherited  habits  and  instincts. 

Yet,  under  the  same,  or  even  harder  conditions,  hanging  where 
there  seems  to  be  no  soil  at  all,  you  will  find  a  few  sumacs  which  are 
pictures  of  health  and  contentment  ;  quite  as  much  so  as  if  the  seed 
from  which  they  sprang  had  happened  to  fall  in  a  rich,  sheltered 
meadow  ;  more  so  than  if  they  had  been  pampered  in  your  lawns  and 
gardens.  Look,  too,  at  some  of  the  thorns  ;  and,  again,  at  the  iron- 
wood  :  where  it  has  not  been  excessively  crowded  or  crippled  by  fire 
or  violence,  you  will  almost  always  find  it  in  good  health.  But 
here  again  you  see  the  need  of  discrimination,  for,  if  the  mountain 
were  coyered  with  ironwoocl,  you  wc  rid  lose  a  good  month  of  sum- 
mer beauty,  its  period  of  leafage  being  so  unusually  short. 

But  you  need  not  lack  all  desirable  variety.*     If  you  do  not  find 

_  *  There  is  a  large  park  near  St.  Petersburg,  in  whicii  trees  of  but  tiiree  "sne- 
fnt  »J'''^-^^S"."^l'?;  ^""^  ^•..^"'^'■«' 'he  author  of  "  L'Art  des  Jardins,"  hiv- 

ng  examined  It  while  trave  ling  under  a  commission  from  the  goverment  of 
nlL  ^^r  'k  7-^.^  '^'  the  result  is  impressive  and  agreeable.  I  advise  nosuch  sim- 
available  trees^""  *  ^""^^^  ''^"^'^  *^*°  *  meaningless  medley  of  all 

37 


^4 


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■\ 


I!    ' 


\ 


,!'  • 


1  ■'■ 

,S   '■ 

\ 

li 

» 

lit         ' 

.  1  ■ 

1.'   «  ", 
t       !;;       ;;^ 

enough  in  the  sound  and  healthy  indigenous  trees  of  the  neighbor- 
hood, you  can  draw  some  beautiful  species  from  Siberia  and  the  high 
Alps  of  Europe,  suitable  for  the  most  exposed  situations,  and  if  you 
go  to  work  a-right  they  need  cost  you  but  a  few  cents  a-piece. 


A  large  proportion  of  all  the  trees  on  the  mountain,  not  yet  sap- 
lings, have  suffered  from  the  effects  of  ice  storms  or  the  falling  of 
others.  They  have,  in  consequence,  fractures  and  wounds  which  are 
the  starting-points  of  processes  of  decay.  Often  this  has  already 
reached  the  heart  of  the  tree,  and  is  beyond  remedy.  These  trees  have 
little  life  left.  Others  not  yet  so  badly  affected  are  constitutionally 
injured  and  will  not  attain  full  growth.  As  they  become  weaker,  their 
branches  or  trunks  falling  will  again  be  destructive  to  others. 

Trees  should  be  planted  with  references  to  the  vacancies  which 
are  to  be  anticipated,  and  a  constant  systematic  pruning  should  be 
kept  up.  Thousands  of  trees  could  be  preserved  by  good  pruning  to 
grow  to  twice  the  size,  and  ten  times  the  age  which  they  are  other- 
wise likely  to  attain.  The  pruning  required  is  not  that  of  an  orchard, 
or  an  avenue,  or  a  forest,  but  it  differs  from  that  taught  in  scientific 
economical  forestry  only  so  far  as  the  aim  should  be  neither  to  induce 
individual  symmetry  of  head,  nor  long,  "clear"  timber  trunks,  but 
rather  a  compact  and  sturdy  growth,  and  heads  formed  not  to  stand 
independently,  but  picturesquely  massing  with  others,  the  value  of 
each  tree  being,  as  a  rule,  dependent  on  an  interchange  of  influence 
with  others  grouping  with  it.  Often  it  will  be  best  to  head  off  the 
natural  leader  ;  often  to  induce  a  strong  low,  lateral  growth,  such  as 
in  economic  forestry  is  to  be  prevented.  With  this  reservation, 
the  best  conveniently  available  instruction  in  the  principles  of  good 
pruning  for  the  mountain,  for  those  who  wish  to  intelligently  watch 
its  forestry,  will  be  found  in  a  recent  publication  for  the  Massachus- 
etts Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Agriculture,  by  Williams  &  Co., 
Boston :  A  Treatise  on  Pruning  Forest  Trees ,  by  A.  des  Cars. 
Translated  from  the  Seventh  French  edition  by  C.  S.  Sargent,  Fro- 
fessor  of  Arboriculture  in  Harvard  College.  One  of  the  mottoes  of  this 
book  is  :  "  It  is  the  duty  of  an  enlightened  community  to  plant  trees, 
and  to  so  take  care  of  them  that  posterity  shall  not  suffer. — Decaigne. 

38 


.* 


XIII. 

Necessarily,  in  a  resort  for  thousands,  there  must  be  much  that  is 
not  natural  and  not  in  itself  poetic,  but  I  fear  that  I  have  reason 
to  more  distinctly  urge  that  this  is  no  ground  upon  which  to 
justify  a  neglect  to  secure  the  largest  practicable  measure  of 
poetic  charm.  It  simply  requires  that  all  available  means  shall 
be  taken  for  making  the  necessary  artificial  things  of  the  park  as 
inconspicuous  as  is  consistent  with  a  frank  avowal  of  their  pur- 
pose, and  for  preventing  incongruous  things  without  the  park  from 
being  forced  on  the  attention  of  those  needing  to  obtain  relief  from 
them. 

Taking  again  for  illustration,  a  road,  (because  it  is  the  most 
unavoidably  conspicuous  artificial  thing  that  you  must  have),  you  will 
have  been  compelled  at  various  points  by  the  topography  to  so  lay  it 
out  that,  though  slightly  curving,  its  course  is  open  to  view  and 
excessively  prominent  far  ahead,  dissecting  and  distracting  the 
landscape.  Planting  trees  close  upon  the  road,  they  must  either 
be  trimmed  too  high  to  serve  as  a  screen  to  its  course  ahead,  or  their 
limbs  will,  in  time,  obstruct  passage  upon  the  road.  Your  resort, 
then,  must  be  to  bushes  of  species  chosen  with  reference  to  the  height 
and  breadth  of  foliage  they  will  ultimately  develop,  with  a  view  to 
the  range  of  vision  of  observers  in  carriages.  If  there  is  a  walk 
following  the  road  it  should,  in  such  cases,  be  so  far  divided  from  it 
as  to  give  room  for  the  required  bank  of  low  foliage  between  it  and 
the  wheel-way.* 

A  similar  course  will  be  taken  where  roads  are  approaching  a  junc- 


These  bushes,  however  large  you  may  mean  them  finally  to  grow,  will  at 
""t  be  mere  whips,  and  of  paltry  and  even  disturbing  effect,  but  you  will  thus, 
at  a  third  of  the  expense  of  planting  large  ones,  obtam  in  the  end  more  valu- 
able results. 

39 


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tion,  to  prevent  one  from  being  unnecessarily  conspicuous  in  looking 
from  another. 

Still  more  imperatively,  with  like  motives,  you  will  plant  both  trees 
and  thickets  of  underwood  wherever  from  within  the  property  there 
is  a  liability  that  outside  objects,  of  which  the  influence  on  the  mind 
would  be  adverse  to  your  ruling  purpose,  may,  in  the  future,  be  forced 
on  the  attention. 

For  example,  it  cannot  serve  that  purpose,  it  can  serve  no  proper 
purpose  for  which  you  hold  the  property,  that  tombs,  hearses,  and 
groups  of  mourners  shall  be  brought  into  view  from  it,  or  the  backs 
and  out-buildings  of  adjoining  dwellings,  or  factory  walls  and 
chimneys,  such  as  it  may  be  some  one's  interest,  by  and  by,  to  build 
at  any  point  on  its  borders.  Consequently,  the  first  thing  to  be  done 
is  the  planting  of  outer  screens  of  foliage  that  will  guard  against  such 
waste  of  mountain  value.  These,  on  the  northern  side  especially,  will 
be  mainly  of  sturdy  conifers,  as  white  and  red  pine,  hemlock,  and 
very  hardy  dwarf  mountain-pines  (lightened  up  a  little  with  white 
birches,  ironwood,  and  moose-maple),  so  that  in  time  they  will  also 
provide  wind-breaks  and  temperers  by  which  the  park  will  be  made 
available  to  the  recreation  of  delicate  people  one  or  two  months 
longer  than  otherwise. 

But  besides  the  more  direct  economies,  sufficiently  suggested,  of 
such  low  screen-plantings,  they  would,  if  wisely  made,  incidentally  go 
far  to  secure  qualities  in  the  scenery  of  the  mountain  (generally  re- 
ferred to  in  books  on  the  subject  as  intricacy,  obscurity,  and  mys- 
tery, and  through  these  affecting  the  apparent  aerial-perspective)  of 
which  the  result  would  be  more  than  equivalent  to  doubling  the  ex- 
tent and  value,  y<?r^^«;'/«;}*^j^,  of  the  property.  I  have  frequently 
known  intelligent  countrymen  estimate  an  area  of  broken  ground, 
through  which  they  had  been  walked,  actually  of  thirty  acres,  at  from 
seventy-five  to  a  hundred,  and  solely  because  of  such  treatment  of  it. 

Such  prescriptions  as  these,  I  hardly  need  say,  are  of  the  alphabet 
of  the  business.  No  man  who  has  given  the  slightest  study  to  it  can 
be  unfamiliar  with  them.  Yet,  as  I  regret  to  testify,  propositions 
were  at  an  early  day  urged  upon  your  commissioners  so  con- 
fidently and  from  such  influential  quarters  that  they  were  forced, 

40 


.  ![■  ^i.| 


if  not  to  yield  to  them,  to  give  them  grave  and  anxious  con- 
sideration, in  which  principles  of  management  directly  the  reverse 
were  assumed  as  if  their  adoption  were  to  be  a  matter  of  course,  nor 
did  your  commissioners  appear  to  have  ground  for  confidence  that 
in  resisting  them  they  would  have  any  strong  support  in  the  public 
opinion  of  the  present  generation. 


41 


H 


t!    ■ 

I 

I!   ■ 

I 

!l 


XIV. 

In  works  of  art  which  the  experience  of  the  world  has  stamped  of  a 
high  grade  of  value,  there  is  found  a  strong  single  purpose,  with  a  va- 
riety of  subordinate  purposes  so  worked  out  and  working  together 
that  the  main  purpose  is  the  better  served  because  of  the  diversity  of 
these  subordinate  purposes.  The  first  secures  the  quality  of  unity 
and  harmony  ;  the  others,  that  of  a  controlled  variety. 

Sound  business  management  will  surely  seek  to  gain  value  for  your 
property  by  making  use  of  the  same  double  method.  False  economy 
will  think  it  impracticable,  or  of  no  consequence,  or  that  it  will  make 
too  much  trouble  ;  failing  to  count  the  cost  and  losses  of  what  it  as- 
sumes to  be  of  less  trouble. 


I 


t|^; 


fl 


,|4 
■si' 


You  have  chosen  to  take  a  mountain  for  your  park,  but,  in  truth, 
a  mountain  barely  worthy  of  the  name.  You  would  call  it  a  hill  if  it 
stood  a  few  miles  further  away  from  the  broad,  flat,  river  valley.  Its 
scenery,  that  is  to  say,  is  but  relatively  mountainous.  Yet,  whatever 
of  special  adaptation  it  has  to  your  purpose  lies  in  that  relative  qual- 
ity. It  would  be  wasteful  to  try  to  make  any  thing  else  than  a  moun- 
tain of  it ;  equally  wasteful  to  attempt  any  thing  which  would  involve 
a  loss  of  such  advantages  as  it  has  for  this  purpose.  No  condition  of 
economical  management,  then,  is  more  stringently  binding  than  that 
of  a  steady  resistance  to  all  short-sighted  aims  which  would  result  in 
such  waste,  or  lead  to  conditions  inconsistent  with  mountain  dignity, 
serenity,  and  strength.  Fancies,  fashions,  and  affectations,  for  which 
room  might  be  temporarily  allowed  on  another  site,  should  have  no 
place.  But  this  unity  involves  neither  sameness  nor  sombre- 
ness.  The  queen  is  not  less  queenly  for  jewels  on  her  head,  ermine 
on  her  shoulders,  and  velvet  in  her  skirts. 

42 


Small  as  your  mountain  is,  it  presents  in  difTerent  parts  no  little 
variety  of  mountain  form  and  feature.  A  leading  economy  in  its 
management  will  be  found  to  lie  in  turning  to  still  better  account 
this  consistent  diversity,  so  that  the  visitor  in  passing  out  of  one  part 
into  another,  will  receive  a  stronger  impression  and  be  more  charmed 
than  he  would  with  greater  sameness. 

In  a  separate  map  appended  to  the  general  plan  furnished  you, 
I  have  designated  eight  topographical  divisions  of  the  mountain, 
each  possessing  natural  characteristics  distinguishing  it  from  those  ad- 
joining. In  the  selection  and  development  of  the  choicer  distinctive 
peculiarities  of  these  several  divisions,  the  exhibition  of  thorn  to  the 
best  advantage,  and  the  merging  of  them  harmoniously  together  in 
one  consistent  beautiful  mountain,  the  highest  economy  will  be 
found.* 

I  will  presently  point  out  the  distinctive  raw  material  of  each,  and 
give  some  indication  of  how  its  value  is  to  be  increased  ;  but  I  wish 
first  to  suggest  one  other  general  motive  of  unity  which  should  be  kept 
in  mind,  in  addition  to  that  referred  to  in  the  last  chapter  of  obscur- 
ing incongruities. 

It  is  to  so  select  the  material  of  planting,  or  the  native  material  to 
be  left  growing,  that,  within  reasonable  limits,  the  principle  upon 
which  Nature,  unassisted,  proceeds  in  her  selections  (though  often 
very  imperfectly)  shall  be  emphasized,  idealized,  or  made  more  ap- 
parent in  landscape  quality. 

In  the  lower  and  less  rugged  parts,  that  is  to  say,  the  predomina- 
ting trees  should  be  such  as  attain  their  most  perfect  character  only 
under  conditions  still  lower,  more  fertile,  and  softer  ;  the  elms  being 
the  most  characteristic  of  those  available  to  you.  These  parts  should 
also  be  planted  (where  screens  or  wind-breaks  are  not  required)  in 
more  open  groups,  and  every  fair  opportunity  taken  to  leave  clean, 
unbroken  surfaces  of  turf  between  tiie  groups. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  most  elevated,  exposed,  Arctic,  and  con- 
tinuously rocky  regions,  the  predominating  trees  should  be  those 
which  are  found   to   occur   naturally  in  even  more  trying  situations. 


*  L  T'^f.  ^^^*-  '^^^  °f  *  ^°^^  °^  ^^*->  either  on  canvas  or  on  the  earth,  is  to  be 
a  Vfhole."— Andre,  L'  Art  des  Jardins,  p.  119. 

43 


certain  scrubby  pines,  for  instance  (.is  Udnksiatia,  which  grows  near 
Ottawa),  and  firs,  with  the  lessor  1/irclies,  liorMl)eams,  and  lliorns. 
Yet,  a  little  lower,  the  white  and  red  pines  and  hendock,  the  canoe 
and  red  birches,  the  rock,  mountain,  Norway,  and  moose  maples, 
with  underwood  and  thickets  of  rowans,  wych-hazel,  the  native  honey- 
suckles, wild  currant,  fragrant  bramble,  the  Canadian  rcdhud,  sumacs, 
clelhra,  rhodora,  andolher  thoroughly  iiardy  and  strong-growing  shrubs. 
Then,  lower  still,  oaks,  bass-wood,  butternut,  ash,  cherry,  red  maple, 
and  such  variety  of  low  trees,  bushes,  prostrate  shrubs,  and  vines  as 
will  be  found  necessary  to  obscure  all  places  where  the  soil  is  too 
thin  and  poor  for  turf  and  the  rock  flat,  scaly  and  uninteresting. 

Pursuing  this  hint  skilfully,  and  not  at  all  in  a  pedantic  or  exact 
spirit,  you  will  cheaply  give  a  stronger  emphasis  to  the  difference  of 
elevation  between  your  mountain  top  and  base,  m.aking  your  moun- 
tain more  mountain-like,  gaining:  withal,  a  natural  and  appropriate 
element  of  variety.* 


111! 


I  will  now  indicate  the  distinctive  raw  material  of  each  of  the 
topographical  districts  to  which  I  have  referred,  and  attempt  to  offer 
some  slight  indication  of  how  its  value  is  to  be  increased  ;  the  motive 
last  explained  being  more  or  less  "  humored  "  to  this  of  the  develop- 
ment of  local  topographical  conditions,  as  will  be  found  easy,  the  re- 
quirements being  nearly  parallel. 

(i.)  First,  there  is  the  broken,  rocky  declivity  which,  on  the  city 
side,  stands  between  the  upper  and  the  lower  parts,  and  which  is  desig- 
nated on  my  m.ap  the  crags.  Its  special  character  and  value  as 
an  clement  of  scenery  is  so  well  known  to  you  that  it  needs  no  de- 
scription.    I  will  refer  at  once  to  its  defects. 

In  parts,  the  rock  which  is  its  distinguishing  feature,  is  of  a  quality 
which  rapidly  decomposes  under  the  influence  of  frost ;  consequently, 
its  surface  has  a  comparatively  soft,  weak  appearance,  and   takes 

*  "  Every  herb  ....  has  its  peculiar  habitation  ....  The  hlj^hest  art  is 
that  which  ....  assigns  it  its  proper  position  ....  and  by  means  of  it  en- 
hances and  enforces  the  great  impression."— Ruskin,  Pre/ace^  ad  ed.  Mod. 
Painters. 

44 


\^.       ,., 


forms  which  arc  only  half  rocky.  It  results,  also,  that  thin  bodies  of 
disintegratod  rock  and  earth  occur,  the  surface  of  which  is  more  or  less 
loose,  so  that  no  soil  can  be  firmly  bedded  upon  them.  Large 
spaces  have,  therefore,  the  landscape  quality  simply  of  a  steeply  in- 
clined plane  with  a  scanty  vegetation  of  coarse  plants,  chiefly  annual, 
or  of  feeble  seedlings  of  trees  which  are  to  be  soon  uprooted  or  slowly 
starved  to  death. 

In  a  general  view,  these  elements  are  not  of  sufRcient  consequence 
to  prevent  the  Crags  from  having  a  most  interesting  character,  but 
they  detract  materially  from  the  value  of  what  is  most  valuable 
in  that  character.     (Really,  pecuniary  value.) 

Forty  years  ago,  and  more,  their  beauty  was  much  greater  than  at 
present,  because  of  a  native  forest  growth  chiefly  of  spruces,  pines, 
and  birches,  which  had  the  effect  of  checking  the  tendency  of  the 
softer  surface  to  wash  and  slide,  causing  soil  to  accumulate,  and  sup- 
port on  the  tamer  parts  a  richer  undergrowth  both  of  shrubs  and 
perennials,  and  \  utially  veiling  in  shadow  and  obscurity  that  which 
was  less  bold,  firm,  and  distinctive.  The  Crags,  as  a  whole,  appeared 
in  consequence,  larger,  bolder,  stronger,  and  approached  more  nearly 
to  grandness  and  sublimity  of  effect ;  at  the  same  time  their  general 
tone  of  color  was  more  cheerful,  and  the  impression  of  detail  obtained 
under  close  observation  irore  interesting  and  agreeable. 

If  you  wish  to  realize  the  value  of  what  you  have  paid  for  the 
property,  as  far  as  the  Crags  are  concerned,  what  has  thus  been 
said  indicates  the  general  principles  of  design  upon  which  you  will 
proceed  in  dealing  with  them.  You  will  by  no  means  be  content, 
however,  with  aiming  to  restore,  as  far  as  practicable,  the  old  con- 
ditions. While  trying  to  guard  against  landslides  and  destructive 
washing,  and  seeking  to  establish  firmer  and  less  barren  surfaces,  the 
growth  of  large  trees  will  be  prevented  where  they  will  have  either 
of  three  results  :  first,  to  hide  the  bolder  and  more  effective  rocks  in 
views  from  below  ;  second,  to  interrupt,  when  of  mature  growth,  the 
best  distant  views  from  above  ;  third,  where,  from  growing  tall  and 
spindling  and  unsupported  by  adjoining  wood  of  the  same  character, 
they  will  be  specially  liable,  when  loaded  with  ice,  to  be  broken  or 
uprooted  by  high  winds.     (From  the  appearance  of  the  stumps  and 

45 


m 


if- 


♦    * 


■H: 


•  *  I' 

1  ;•   i        ^ 


wreckage  which  I  found  in  1874,  I  judged  this  to  have  been  a  chief 
cause  of  the  destruction  of  the  old  forest.) 

Trees  of  a  low  and  compact  sort  will  be  chosen  ;  they  will  be 
planted  while  yet  very  small,  their  early  growth  nursed  with  care,  and 
any  tendency  to  shoot  up  in  a  thin  and  weakly  way  checked  with  the 
knife.  The  native  growth  of  low  shrubs,  and  particularly  of  vines, 
brambles,  and  bracken,  will  be  generally  encouraged,  guarded  from 
wash  and  fires,  and  supplemented  by  other  like  plantings.  The  dif- 
ferent native  sumacs  will  be  specially  propagated  in  the  upper  shelves 
of  the  ledges  and  in  the  gaps  and  wash-ways  betveen  the  bolder  rocks  ; 
because,  with  a  little  use  of  the  knife,  they  will  not,  even  when  reach- 
ing within  a  few  feet  of  the  top,  grow  upward  so  much  as  to  obstruct 
the  view  from  the  heights  ;  because  they  supply  the  most  beautiful  of 
our  northern  foliage  to  be  looked  upon  from  above  (being  fountain-like 
in  the  disposition  of  spray  spreading  out  under  spray  of  foliage) ; 
and,  lastly,  because  they  maintain,  as  I  have  before  observed,  under 
♦he  most  unfavorable  circumstances,  cheerful  qualities  of  color. 
Various  diminutive  spruces,  firs,  and  pines  may  be  used  also  to  ad- 
vantage where  large  trees  will  be  undesirable  ;  and  in  all  the  more 
moist,  shady  places  the  Canadian  yew  (an  evergreen  trailer  with  large 
bright  berries)  should  be  profusely  planted.  I  would  have  it  grown 
in  seed-beds  by  thousands.  I  would  make  trial  also  of  a  Japanese 
yew  {7'axus  adpressd)  which  is  hardier  on  the  American  Atlantic 
coast  than  the  English  churchyard  yew,  and  much  more  bushy  and 
graceful,  falling  very  nicely  over  rocks. 


■||ii      .' 

%  J, 


in 


(2.)  Immediately  above  the  Crags  there  is  a  large  district  the  surface 
of  which  lies  at  various  inclinations  and  is  much  broken,  though  sel- 
dom abruptly,  by  comparatively  small  outcrops  of  rock,  between  which 
the  soil  is  generally  poor,  thin,  and  arid.  The  trees  upon  it,  when 
not  standing  singly,  tend  to  grow  in  clusters  and  groups,  and 
many  are  dwarfed,  feeble,  and  sickly.  A  little  yearly  continuous 
planting  will  be  needed  to  replace  those  falling  out  or  intentiouiilly 
removed.  I  have  before  inclic-ited  the  principles  which  should  govern 
its  selection. 

46 


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.€ 


I 


(3.)  Farther  to  the  south,  and  extending  from  a  little  beyond  the 
south  end  of  the  Crags  to  the  Cote  de  Neige  road  is  another  district  of 
similar  character,  with  a  little  deeper  and  better  soil  between  the 
rocks,  and  with  finer  trees  (partly  because  of  the  better  soil,  and 
partly  because  less  harshly  treated  by  storm  and  frost.) 

(4.)  Away  to  the  north,  and  below  the  northern  crags,  there  is 
another  division  of  similar  characteristics. 

To  all  of  this  rugged  and  rocky  land  I  apply  the  old  English  term 
FELL,  and  the  three  divisions  of  it  indicated  I  distinguish  re- 
spectively :  the  Upperfell  being  all  that  above  the  Crags  the 
UNDERPELL  being  that  below  the  Crags;  and  the  brakenfell. 
which  includes  all  the  steep,  broken  ground,  much  overgrown  with 
braken,  south  of  the  Crags. 

The  two  latter  districts  should  be  treated  as  a  forest  with  numerous 
ferny  openings.  The  natural  growth  of  the  Brakenfell  is  largly  of 
maples  in  the  lower  parts,  of  pines  and  birches  above  ;  none  can  be 
bet  er.  It  simply  needs  to  have  the  poorer  trees  taken  out,  to  be 
bmken  a  little  into  groups  and  groves,  and  to  have  younger  low 
foliage  added,  on  their  skirts.     This  and  careful  pruning 


(5.)    Between  the  Upperfell  and  the  Brakenfell  there  is  a  lone 
gentle  depression  of  the  surface,  extending  from  the  south  end  of 
he  Crags    westerly  toward  the    Cote   de   Neige   Cemetery.      Here 
the  ground  is  smooth,  little  wooded,  and  the  soil  generally  alluvial 
and  peaty  ;  moister  than  any  other  on  the  mountain.     It  is   in  fact 
a  mountain  meadow  of  severe  exposure.     The  old  house,  now  occu! 
pied  by  the  superintendent,  stands  in  the  midst  of  it  (destroying  its 
most  marked  natural  quality,  and  interrupting  lovely  distant  views). 
This  district  I  call  the  glades.     It  is  important  that  its  original, 
simple,  attractive  character  should,  as  soon  as  you  can  afford  it.  be 
regained  and  made  the  most  of.     It  needs  no  planting,  except  to  re- 
store  a  natural  face  to  the  bordering  woods,  where  they  have  been 
Ill-used.     It  can  easily  be  made  the  finest  spread  of  turf  on  the  con- 

47 


KP 


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■       I 


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i    " 


tinent.     But  it  will  be  best  kept,  when  once  well  formed,  with  sheep 
and  not  with  lawn-like  smoothness. 

(6.)  The  small  district  below  the  Crags,  between  the  Braken- 
fell  and  the  Underfell,  I  have  called  the  cragsfoot.  It  is  that 
containing  the  little  reservoir  and  the  unfortunate  zigzag  road  from 
Drummond  Street,  by  which  its  natural  character  is  destroyed.  The 
native  wood  should  be  thickened,  and  the  sides  of  the  road  planted 
densely  and  simply  with  thick  bodies  of  ordinary  underwood  ;  the 
object  being  to  make  the  artificial  features  unobtrusive,  and  induce  a 
simple,  calm,  forest  effect. 

(7.)  On  the  slope  below  the  Underfell,  toward  Saint  Jean 
Baptiste,  there  is  a  district  lying  between  two  low  but  well-defined 
ledges  of  rock,  being  that  in  which  the  City  Council  has 
ordained  a  pest-house,  and  including  a  considerable  smooth  field 
of  fair  soil,  on  which  is  growing  an  orchard.  This  generally  re- 
sembles the  fell-land,  but  is  less  broken  by  lumpy  rocks,  and  more 
amenable  to  cultivation.  I  designate  it  THE  piedmont.  It  should 
be  planted,  in  addition  to  its  present  scattering  growth  (largely  of 
basswood  rapidly  approaching  decay),  with  groups  of  the  lowland 
trees  before  mentioned  (next  above  the  lowest  range),  with  under- 
wood only  to  obscure  the  poorest  rocky  parts.  The  groups  should  be 
formed  generally  in  connection  with  the  rocks  and  ledges,  leaving 
between  them  the  broadest  turfy  openings  practicable.  In  forming 
the  groups,  species  should  be  associated  which  are  inclined  to  form 
soft  and  harmonious  outlines  together,  and  most,  if  not  all,  the  trees 
of  each  group  should  be  of  one  kind,  and  the  adjoining  groups  not  of 
trees  of  strongly  contrasting  qualities,  the  object  here  being  not  local 
picturesqueness,  but  a  softer  charm  enhancing  the  characteristic 
quality  of  the  fells  and  crags. 


•  i 


(8.)  There  remains  the  large  district  of  gentle  slopes  below  the 
last  ledge,  with  still  less  of  protruding  rock,  which,  taking  the  way 
of  your  old  Norman  colonists,  I  call  "  C6te  Placide,"  a  term  to 

48 


be  liked  none  the  less  because  it  brings  to  mind  that  other  branch 
from  the  same  trunk,  which  formed  the  Parish  Placide  on  the  Red 
River  of  Louisiana,  and  poor  Evangeline.  But  it  must  be  well  under- 
stood that  it  is  only  by  comparison  with  the  adjoining  mountain-land 
that  it  has  the  character  indicated.  Its  value  is  great,  if  properly 
used;  as,  with  refcitmce  to  your  possible  scale  of  scenery,  it  will  repre- 
sent the  opposite  note  to  the  necessary  sternness  of  the  Upperfells. 
Also,  if  properly  used,  it  will  add  greatly  to  the  effect  of  the  views 
down  the  great  valley  from  the  northern  heights,  for,  with  lofty  trees 
along  its  border,  it  will  give  greater  distance  and  obscuvity  to  the 
buildings  in  the  adjoining  quarter  of  the  town,  and  form  a  rich  and 
consistent  foreground  to  a  scene  which,  under  certain  atmospheric 
conditions,  is  hardly  surpassed  among  all  those  of  its  class  upon  which 
the  world  has  fixed  the  highest  value. 

By  "properly  used,"  I  mean,  however,  not  only  so  used  that  its 
present  moderate  contrast  of  cha/acter  with  the  more  rugged  parts  of 
your  property  should  be  increaserl,  but  that  it  shall  also  be  adapted  to 
provide  a  measurably  complete  sylvan  experience  in  itself  for  visitors 
who  have  not  time  or,  in  the  inclement  part  of  the  year,  physical 
endurance  for  the  ascent  of  thi  mountain. 

"What  is  first  needed  for  these  ends  is  additional  soil.  I  consulted 
several  of  your  city  officers  on  the  point  of  economy  involved  in  this 
suggestion,  and  was  assured  by  all  that  an  abundant  supply  of  street 
dirt  and  other  wastes  could  be  obtained,  by  an  order  of  the  Council, 
to  more  than  double  the  present  depth  of  soil  wherever  it  is  impor- 
tant, in  two  or  three  years'  time,  at  a  cost  (in  addition  to  what  is  now 
paid  for  disposing  of  the  same  material)  that  will  make  it  inexpen- 
sive ;  some  said  it  would  even  be  at  a  saving. 

Wherever  there  are  rocks  in  this  district,  they  should  either  be 
exposed  as  boldly  as  possible  (other  loose  rocks  being  sometimes  laid 
upon  them,  to  make  the  incident  more  decided),  and  overgrown  with 
vines,  or  they  should  be  covered,  at  least  two  feet  deep,  with  good 
loam  and  soil.  Clusters,  chiefly  of  elms,  American  white  ash;  and 
white  oak  may  be  planted  as  indicated  on  the  design-map,  and 
broken  rows  or  narrow  belts  of  the  same  along  the  exterior  suburban 
roads. 


.<'■ 


11 

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49 


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i 


.I* 

I: 

I.  ^ 


XV. 

One  of  the  most  inconsiderately  wasteful  ways  of  spending  money 
on  the  mountain  to  which  you  are  liable  to  be  tempted,  is  that  of  the 
introduction  upon  it  of  flower-beds,  clumps  of  flowering  shrubs,  cush- 
ions of  rhododendrons  or  azaleas,  schools  of  roses — possibly  ribband- 
gardening,  floral  embroidery,  sub-tropical  borders,  and  whatever  is 
commonly  found  on  a  polished  lawn  of  the  present  fashion  in  lawns, 
in  a  place  furnished  with  propagatin'^  houses  and  wintering  pits, 
and  given  over  to  a  fashionable  gardener. 

The  delusion  that  these  things  may  be  of  the  required  proper  furni- 
ture of  a  public  park,  as  they  more  or  less  may  be  of  a  luxurious  pri- 
vate residence,  of  a  botanic  garden,  or  an  urban  promenade,  is  tlie 
more  to  be  guarded  against,  because  culpable  neglect  of  the  perma- 
nent and  substantial  business  of  the  undertaking  can  be  so  readily 
glossed  over  by  means  of  them,  and  the  question  will  often  be 
pressed.  Why  should  the  taste  that  they  gratify  not  be  catered  to  ? 

It  should  not,  because  the  result  would  be  an  adulteration  and 
counteraction  of  the  wholesome  influence  of  the  appropriate  scenery 
of  the  mountain,  which  alone  supplies  a  sound  justification  for  any 
of  the  outlay  to  be  made  on  it,  and  the  management  which  resorts 
to  it  will  be  tearing  down  with  one  hand  what  it  builds  up  with 
the  other.* 

But  does  it  follow  that  you  can  have  none  of  the  refinement  of 
grace,  delicacy,  color,  and  incense  which  is  supplied  by  flowering 
plants  ?  By  no  means.  There  can  be  no  greater  mistake  than  to 
suppose  either  that  dug  beds  or  borders  and  garden  primness  are 
necessary  to  this  end,  or  that  it  is  inconsistent  with  mountain  char- 
acter. 

"  *  Few  human  beings  have  contravened  nature's  laws  more    than  our 
flower-gardeners."— A'<?3/Mf£?«.     The  Sub-tropical  Garden.     London.,  Murray. 

50 


It      < 


^^w 


wmm 


m^mm 


I  once  stood  at  an  elevation  seventeen  times  higher  than  Mount 
Royal  ;  great  fields  of  snow  below,  and,  in  a  general  view,  nothing  to 
be  seen  for  hundreds  of  acres  about  me  but  shapeless  fragments  of 
rock  ;  yet  casting  the  eye  downward,  everywhere,  even  in  the  darkest 
shadows,  there  were  gleams  of  color  ;  and,  upon  looking  closely, 
there  was,  in  every  slightest  shelter,  a  most  exquisite  bloom  and 
verdure. 

What,  then,  is  not  practicable  that  you  can  reasonably  wish  to  have 
of  floral  wealth  in  your  little  mountain,  clear  of  snow  as  it  is  for  more 
than  half  the  year,  and  with  a  climate  which,  on  its  sunny  side  at 
least,  is  not  found  inhospitable  to  more  than  one  of  the  trees  which 
grow  naturally  in  association  with  the  fig  and  the  olive  ? 

Let  it  be  borne  always  in  mind  that  your  mountain  of  less  than 
a  thousand  feet  of  elevation  is  royal  only  by  courtesy,  and  that  if  you 
attempt  to  deal  with  it  as  if  it  had  the  impregnable  majesty  of  an 
Alpine  monarch,  you  only  make  it  ridiculous. 

Be  assured  that  if  you  will  keep  but  one  good  honest  man  intelli- 
gently at  work  for  the  purpose,  you  may  in  five  years  find  upon  it 
charming  refinements  of  mountain  beauty,  refinements  which  will  be 
thoroughly  appropriate  and  add  incalculably  to  its  value.* 

I  will  go  further,  and  tell  you  that  if  you  cannot  afford  to  keep  a 
single  man  so  employed,  there  are  hundreds  of  little  places  on  the 
mountain  within  which,  if  you  can  but  persuade  yourselves  to  regard 
ihem  as  sacred  places  and  save  them  from  sacrilegious  hands  and  feet, 
the  original  Gardener  of  Eden  will  delight  your  eyes  with  little  pic- 
tures within  greater  pictures  of  indescribable  loveliness.  And  re- 
member that  it  is  the  lilies  of  the  field,  not  the  lilies  of  the  garden 
we  are  bid  to  consider. 

Such  beauty  as  is  thus  available,  will  make  no  amends  for  rude- 
ness, coarseness,  and  vulgarity  in  the  borders  of  your  roads  and 
walks  ;  it  will  but  make  what  is  crude  and  unnatural  the  more 
conspicuous,  as  a  jewel  set  upon  soiled  linen  makes  it  the  more  of- 


*  Read  upon  this,  I  bep;,  simply  as  giving  hints  as  to  how  much  can  be  done 
with  little  effort,  Mr.  Robinson's  two  little  books:  one  upon  "  VVili  Garden- 
ing,"' the  other  uiion  "  Alpine  Flowers  "  (Murray,  London,  1870).  The  very- 
best  things  for  your  purpose  are  sucli  as,  once  established  and  a  little  guarded, 
will  take  care  of  themselves,  propagate  and  spread,  like  our  common  Ameri- 
can wild  violets. 

51 


i 


i 

1 


•If 


VM 


II 


V    i 


.«    ' 


*  I  I 


fensive.  But  when  you  have  natural  homes  for  it,  especially  with 
much  and  rapid  inflections  of  surface,  as  in  the  little  rocky  notches 
and  gaps,  dinglets  and  runlets  of  the  Brackenfell,  you  need  not  be 
afraid  of  too  great  a  profusion  nor  too  great  a  variety  of  perennial 
and  annual  plants  ;  of  too  much  color,  nor  of  a  growth  too  intricate 
and  mazy. 

This  is  not  the  most  difficult  form  of  refinement  for  you  to  gain  ; 
indeed,  it  is  so  easy,  so  cheap,  that  when  I  was  last  on  the  mountain 
I  found  many  places  where  no  small  degree  of  it  already  existed, 
and  places,  too,  which,  when  I  had  first  studied  them  in  1874,  ap- 
peared rude,  raw,  and  barren.  To  what  did  you  owe  this  improve- 
ment ?  To  any  digging  and  bedding  ;  raking,  sowing  or  weeding  of 
a  florist  ?  Not  at  all,  but  simply  and  solely  to  the  fact,  as  far  as  I 
could  judge,  that  before  that  time  cattle  had  been  ranging  over  the 
ground,  and  afterward  it  had  been  protected  from  them. 

But  remember  that  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  a  hundred  men 
from  trampling  over  one  of  these  spots  to-morrow  and  making  a 
complete  wreck  of  it,  destroying  not  only  the  plants  but  the  con- 
ditions of  their  reproduction. 


Ml. 


1' 


1    :i 


53 


I' 


XVI. 


If  you  attempt  anywhere  to  have  such  refinements  of  detail  as  I 
have  been  last  suggesting  (I  do  not  say  they  are  essential),  or  even  a 
fair  quality  of  turf,  trees,  and  shrubs,  and  yet  shrink  from  attempting 
to  control  the  movements  of  people  on  the  ground,  you  will  find  the 
losses  from  filching  and  from  injuries  through  carelessness,  discour- 
aging and  disheartening.  The  natural  flowering  plants,  except  a 
few  coarse  weeds,  will  gradually  disappear  ;  choice  trees  will  be 
sickened ;  often  their  bark  will  be  cut  or  bruised,  sometimes 
girdled  and  their  limbs  broken  down  in  such  a  manner  as  to  estab- 
lish disease   from   which  they  never  recover.* 

The  only  way  in  which  any  town  park  can  long  be  kept  in  a  gen- 
erally useful  and  improving  condition,  is  by  providing  so  well  and 
amply  for  the  uses  which  are  designed  to  be  made  of  it  that  the 
great  body  of  decent,  orderly,  tidy,  and  respectable  people  will  not 
be  impelled  to  fall  into  practices  inconvenient  to  others  or  unfavora- 
ble to  the  preservation  and  improvement  of  its  natural  beauty.  This 
done,  the  silent  influence  of  example  and  of  an  obvious  custom,  act- 
ing helpfully  to  the  police  regulations,  will  strongly  persuade  others 
to  exercise  due  control  upon  perverse  inclinations. 

Half  the  practical  business  of  park  management  may,  in  fact,  be 
referred  to  a  lively  sense  of  two  traits  of  character  of  the  average 
civilized  man  as  we  have  to  deal  with  him. 


*  Even  ram  and  air  are  denied  them,  because,  as  has  been  said,  the  soil 
gets  hardened  by  constant  trampling  and  baked  by  the  hot  sun."  Pall-Mali 
Gazette  on  ^^  the  miserable  condition  into  ■which  Kensington  Gardens^  the 
most  characteristic  and  exceptional  of  all  the  London  parks,  has  bee. t  allowed 
to  sink:'    September,  1878. 

I  once  examined  soo  trees,  in  succession,  upon  a  neglected  public  park,  and 
found  not  one  free  from  serious  wounds  due  to  careless  or  wanton  violence. 
Two-thirds  were  so  injured  as  not  to  be  worth  keeping. 

53 


if 


H« 


■W>" 


I':'     V 


B 


'!. 


I 

1 


1 4 


I 
t    , 


■lUi 


One  is  his  disposition  to  adapt  his  conduct  to  the  circumstances  in 
which  he  finds  himself,  and  especially  to  be  neat,  cleanly,  and  nice 
where  the  objects  about  him  are  neat,  cleanly,  and  nice.  I  have  re- 
peatedly had  occasion  to  observe  that  while  any  park  work  is  in  an 
incomplete  condition,  with  materials  in  the  rough,  and  litter  of  work- 
men lying  about,  no  police,  no  fences,  and  guards  are  adequate  to 
prevent  the  occurrence  of  wanton  injuries  and  manifestations  of  rude- 
ness, recklessness,  and  destructiveness.  (How  few  boys  can  resist  the 
temptation  to  throw  stones  at  the  windows  of  a  vacant  and  delapi- 
dated  house  ?)  Passing  the  finished  point,  the  litter  cleared  up,  the 
turf  established  and  once  smooth-mown,  and  every  thing  in  view 
having  a  complete  and  refined  aspect,  a  change  occurs,  and  fences  and 
guards,  before  necessary,  may  be  removed,  and  the  police  reduced 
without  danger. 

Again,  if  provisions  for  any  purpose  have  an  appearance  of  being 
well  considered  and  liberal,  there  is  a  common  disposition  to  be  con- 
tent with  them  ;  if  they  make  no  such  impression,  but  on  the  contrary 
seem  mean  and  makeshift,  the  sense  of  shame  in  what  would  other- 
wise be  lawlessness  cannot  be  counted  on. 

If  in  public  places  you  have  a  walk  of  a  certain  capacity  between 
borders  of  fine  turf,  people  will  submit  to  considerable  crowd- 
ing without  going  out  of  it  ;  when  the  crowding  passes  a  certain 
point  a  few  will  step  on  the  turf,  doing  little  harm,  but  when  the  walk 
is  so  crowded  that  the  provision  seems  absurdly  inadequate,  of  a  sud- 
den, the  rule,  by  common  assent,  becomes  a  dead  letter,  and  the  most 
reserved  and  cautious  take  to  the  turf.  Under  corresponding  influ- 
ences seats  will  be  used  to  stand  upon,  and  may  be  broken  or  defiled 
without  compunction. 

So,  if  the  necessities  of  the  body  cannot  be  accommodated  decently 
within  reasonable  distance,  there  will  soon  grow  up  upon  the  park  a 
common  law  by  which  they  will  be  accommodated  indecently.  Your 
police  will  for  a  time  contend  with  this  in  vain,  and  then  will  be  sul- 
lenly blind  to  it. 

At  a  small  part  of  the  study  required  for  putting  and  keeping  the 
mountain  in  a  condition  in  which  it  will  have  a  high  degree  of  use- 
fulness to  the  average  citizen  of  Montreal,  his  wife  and  children,  it 

54 


i^: 


can  be  kept  in  a  condition  in  which  a  small  proportion  of  your  least 
valuable  population,  to  whom  any  refinement  of  manners  or  check 
upon  vulgar  and  brutal  habits  is  irksome,  will  continue  to  resort  to  it 
with  more  or  less  of  pleasure.  This  pleasure  will  consist  not  so 
much  in  positive  enjoyment  as  in  negative  relief  from  what  is  else- 
where tiresome  and  dreary.  And  if  nothing  or  but  little  more  is  done 
than  is  necessary  to  adapt  the  mountain  to  be  satisfactory  in  this 
way,  it  will  gradually  come  to  be  satisfactory  in  no  other,  and  what 
money  you  spend  on  it  will  be  mainly  ill-spent. 

On  these  grounds  I  advise  you  not  to  allow  the  mountain  to  be  in 
all  parts  left  open  to  be  wandered  over  and  used  at  will  at  all  times 
by  all  comers.  You  cannot  afford  the  force  of  police  which,  if  you 
do  so,  will  be  necessary  to  the  protection  of  its  finer  elements  of 
value.  You  cannot  afford  to  waste  these  elements.  As  a  measure  of 
economy,  therefore,  I  submit  the  following  suggestions,  to  the  adop- 
tion of  which  the  roads  and  walks  of  the  plan  have  been  adjusted  : 

Open  all  of  the  Upperfell,  to  be  used  by  all  comers  at  all  times, 
for  rambling  at  will ;  for  picnicing  ;  for  all  boys'  and  childrens'  games 
and  plays  that  do  not  involve  the  use  of  missiles.  Supply  swings  and 
other  amusements  for  the  little  ones.  Furnish  abundance  of  com- 
fortable seats,  and  do  not  forbid  decent  seating  on  the  ground  and 
rocks. 

Have  a  well  provided  public  house,  with  so  much  roofing  that  in 
case  of  sudden  showers  a  large  company  may  obtain  shelter  in  it. 
Let  a  part  of  its  rent  be  paid  in  providing,  gratuitously,  under  con- 
stant supervision  and  in  a  cleanly  and  decent  way,  such  accommoda- 
tions as  are  necessary  for  women  and  children  when  absent  some 
hours  from  home.  Let  it  also  provide  gratuitously,  or  at  a  nominal 
price,  hot  water  for  those  who  want  to  make  tea  on  the  ground.* 

Make  it  an  easy  custom  to  fall  into  for  all  classes  of  people,  even 
your  poorest  workingman,  to  come  here  by  families,  once  or  twice  a 

♦The  commissioners  have  plans  for  this  house,  prepared  under  my  advicei 
by  Mr.  T.  VV'isedell,  architect.  The  conspicuous  parts  are  of  axe-finished 
timber,  not  to  be  painted  ;  it  is  fitted  to  sit  on  a  saddle  of  rock,  so  surrounded 
by  natural  low  wood,  growing  on  ground  declining  from  it,  that  v/hile  com- 
manding from  its  upper  parts  a  magnificent  outlook  the  building  will  scarcely 
be  seen  except  by  those  who  have  occasion  to  use  it. 


i 


i^ 


1 


:(\ 


55 


iviiiummiummm  tnn^j  tmummm 


r-  \. 


b 


\  '■ 


t! 

I 

II 


i'l! 


'ii        ' '       I 


iH- 


1    . 


week,  late  in  the  day,  during  the  hot  season,  to  take  their  evening 
meal. 

In  short,  let  the  district  be  used  as,  from  the  opening  of  the  ground 
to  the  public,  it  has  been  used,  with  onl)'  the  difference  that  would 
occur  from  additional  conveniences  and  better  provisions  for  the 
safety  and  comfort  of  women  and  children.  Keep  active  and  intelli- 
gent guardians  vioving  briskly  through  it,  so  that  the  modest,  timid, 
and  nervous  may  have  frequent  assurance  of  protection  against 
rudeness. 

I  was  glad,  in  my  last  visit,  to  see  clergymen  leading  large  schools 
to  the  mountain  for  recreation.  Offer  every  encouragement  to  the 
growth  of  the  custom.  The  presence  of  these  gentlemen  will  give 
countenance  and  confidence  to  mothers  to  come  with  their  daughters 
and  little  ones. 

When  the  ground  shall  be  constantly  and  largely  used  in  the  do- 
mestic ways  I  have  thus  indicated,  the  danger  of  its  misuse  in  any 
way  will  be  slight,  and  your  expense  for  police  and  for  repairs  may 
with  safety  be  moderate.  No  men  are  reckless  in  their  conduct  in  a 
place  in  which  good  women  and  children  seem  to  be  at  home. 

The  district  of  which  I  here  speak,  the  Upperfell,  has  an  area  of  50 
acres,  of  very  diversified  surface  ;  it  includes  the  highest  elevation  of 
the  mountain.  It  has  little  soil,  and  with  a  proper  treatment  will  be 
occupied  by  low,  sturdy  wood  and  a  few  strong  thorny  thickets,  the 
trees  in  groups  and  small  groves  with  numerous  mossy  openings,  with 
a  great  deal  of  natural  rocky  surface  on  which  children  can  play  and 
picnic  parties  sit,  harming  nothing.  Many  of  these  rocks  command 
fine  distant  views,  and  it  is  the  district  now  more  resorted  to  by  the 
public  than  any  other. 

This  fifty  acres  of  the  Upperfell  being  at  all  times  open  to  every- 
body, aim  in  other  parts  of  the  two  fell-land  districts  to  cultivate 
somewhat  richer  mountain  character,  and,  in  order  to  do  so,  restrict 
movement  through  them  to  the  roads,  walks,  and  prepared  places, 
except  upon  holidays.  Let  there  be,  however,  numerous  places 
well  adapted  by  the  character  of  their  ledges,  open  groves,  and  finely 
verdured  dells  for  picnic  parties.  Provide  springs  or  little  nat- 
ural rock  fountams  in   connection  with  them.     Hold  each  of  these 

56 


I  •;: 


>.\  \\.   ,;.     ;.  ■ 
It,  't  ■     * 


places  open  to  be  used  at  any  time  for  picnic  or  festive  parties, 
whether  of  friends  or  of  schools,  churches,  societies,  or  any  organi- 
zations  either  permanent  or  formed  for  the  occasion. 

Require  only  that  each  shall  take  the  trouble  to  make  application 
and  have  suitable  grounds  assigned  for  its  use  in  advance,  and  that  it 
shall  give  some  reasonable  assurance  that  the  privilege  will  not  be 
abused.  AH  such  places  can  then  be  decked  about  with  shrubbery 
and  suitable  wild  flowering  plants,  naturally  disposed,  and  each  have 
its  own  distinctive  sylvan  and  idyllic  attractions. 

Again,  at  suitable  houses,  one  in  the  Brackenfell  and  one  in  the 
Underfell,  let  desirable  conveniences  for  such  parties  be  supplied, 
and  at  the  upper  one  let  there  be  sheds  so  that  some  can  come  in 
vehicles  and  have  their  horses  properly  cared  for. 

The  two  districts  being  adequately  provided  in  all  respects  for  their 
designed  use,  in  all  the  remainder  of  the  park  let  visitors  be  re- 
stricted under  ordinary  circumstances  to  the  roads,  walks,  and 
other  accommodations  specially  prepared  for  them.  On  holi- 
days,  when  (at  special  cost  for  the  occasion)  you  throw  all  open,  have 
much  of  the  ordinary  housekeeping  work  of  the  ground  finished  early 
in  the  morning  or  the  night  before,  and  let  the  more  intelligent  and 
trustworthy  of  the  men  ordinarily  employed  upon  it  act  as  assistant 
watchmen  to  the  regular  police,  mainly  with  a  view  to  check,  by  their 
presence  and  a  polite  cautionary  word  upon  occasion,  any  tendency 
they  may  observe  of  visitors  to  fall  into  practices  wasteful  of  the 
value  of  the  property.  It  is  wonderful  how  much  may  be  accomp- 
lished in  this  way,  especially  when  care  has  been  once  taken  to  es- 
tablish good  and  prevent  the  forming  of  bad  customs. 


Such  management  of  the  property  as  I  have  thus  advised  may  re- 
quire some  little  self-restraint  of  you  and  some  troublesome  thought- 
fulness  of  your  servants.  So  does  any  soundly  economical  manage- 
ment of  any  of  your  business.  So  does  every  advantage  which  civ- 
ilized men  possess  over  barbarians. 


57 


B 

(I  f 


l! 


4  •»      r- 

•Jl 


i 


XVII 

Among  properties  of  its  class  your  mountain  possesses  one  marked 
advantai^c  over  all  others.  I  mean  that  of  noble  landscapes  extend- 
ing far  beyond  its  borders.  These  are  of  such  extent  and  so  com 
posed,  and  their  foregrounds  within  the  property  are  to  be  so  easily 
adapted  to  increase  their  value  ;  their  interest  is  so  varied  according 
to  the  direction  of  the  outlook  and  the  passing  effects  of  clouds  and 
atmospheric  conditions,  that  it  is  not  only  impossible  to  speak  of  ihem 
in  adequate  terms  of  admiration,  but,  trying  to  take  a  business  esti- 
mate of  them,  and  seeking  standards  of  comparison  for  the  purpose, 
it  vi'ill  be  found  that  the  best  that  other  communities  have  been  able 
to  obtain  by  expenditures  counting  in  millions  of  dollars,  is  really  too 
insignificant  to  be  available  for  the  purpose. 

And  yet,  trying  still  to  take  a  business  view  of  them,  simply  as  an  ele- 
ment in  the  general  value  of  the  mountain  as  a  city  property,  it  may 
possibly  come  about  that  you  would  be  richer  without  them.  I  say 
this  because  among  the  currents  of  public  opinion  of  which  I  had 
some  experience  with  you,  there  was  a  certain  spendthrift  tendency 
to  slight  every  element  of  value  in  the  property  except  that  of  the 
great  views.  There  were  those  who  would  have  thought  it  a  triumph 
of  art  to  whisk  people  up  to  the  highest  eminence  of  the  mountain, 
give  them  a  big  mouthful  of  landscape  beauty,  and  slide  them  back  to 
town  in  the  shortest  possible  way  ;  and  there  were,  even  before  I  was 
consulted,  speculations  afoot  for  doing  something  of  the  kind  at  so 
much  a  head. 

It  might  be  to  some  a  question  whether  the  most  valuable  influence 
of  properties  of  this  class  is  to  be  found  in  such  distinct  sensational 
features,  even  though  provided  by  nature,  as  are  commonly  most  con- 
sciously felt,  talked  about,  and  written  about,  or  in  more  unobtrusive, 

58 


pervading,  home-like  qualities  of  wliichlhe  effccls  come  to  one  less  in 
a  torrent-like  way,  than  as  the  gentle,  persuasive  dew,  falling  so  softly 
as  to  be  imperceptible,  and  yet  doliglufuUy  rcinvigorating  in  its 
results.  Even  this  might  be  to  some  a  question  ;  but  let  any  man  ask 
himself  whether  the  value  of  such  views  as  the  grandest  the  mountain 
offers,  is  greater  when  they  are  made  distinct  spectacles  or  when  they 
are  enjoyed  as  successive  incidents  of  a  sustained  landscape  poem,  to 
each  of  which  the  mind  is  gradually  and  sweetly  led  up,  and  from  which 
it  is  gradually  and  sweetly  led  away,  so  that  they  become  a  pari  of  a 
consistent  experience, — let  him  ask  this  with  reference  to  the  soothing 
and  refreshment  of  a  town-strained  human  organization,  and  he  will 
not  need  argument  to  lead  him  to  a  sound  conclusion. 

But  as  you  have  the  one  thing  and  as  yet  have  not  the  other,  ex- 
cept in  a  very  crude  and  imperfect  form,  disturbed  throughout  witli 
blotches,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  try,  if  ever  so  poorly,  to  suggest 
what  would  rule  a  wise  economy.  (Would  that  a  literary  artist  would 
undertake  the  duty.) 


It  is  not  the  stronger  but  the  weaker  links  of  a  chain  that  you  must 
consider  in  determining  what  strain  you  will  put  upon  it.  Fit 
your  work  on  the  mountain  to  over-weighted  nervous  conditions  and 
you  may  be  sure  that  it  will  suit  the  robust  and  light-hearted. 

On  this  principle  it  is  better  in  dealing  with  it  to  cultivate  the  habit 
of  thouji,.ful  attention  to  the  feebler  sort  of  folk — of  asking,  for  in- 
stance, can  this  or  that  be  made  easier  and  more  grateful  to  an  old 
woman  or  a  sick  child,  without,  on  the  whole,  additional  expense,  ex- 
cept in  tho'ightfulness  ?  If  so,  ten  to  one,  the  little  improvement  will 
simply  be  that  refinement  of  judgment  which  is  the  larger  part  of  the 
difference  between  good  and  poor  art,  and  the  enjoyment  of  every 
man  will  be  increased  by  it,  though  he  may  not  know  just  how. 

With  this  idea  in  mind  think  over  what  you  would  like  to  be  able 
to  do  if  you  were  much  concerned  about  the  health  of  a  father, 
brother,  or  son  whose  private  business  cares  you  saw  to  be  wearinjr 
upon  him  to  a  point  of  danger  ;  who  was  growing  morbidly  irritably 

59 


ii 


Ill 


^^ 


h 


I 


t\ 


\{ 


I!     M 


•  M 


■|«i  ... 


and  despondent,  or,  what  is  quite  as  bad,  morbidly  sanguine  and 
reckless.  Or  again,  take  the  case  of  a  woman  recovering  with  tedious 
slowness  from  a  severe  illness,  still  weak,  low  in  spirits,  and  under 
obvious  nervous  prostration.  Take  cases  such  as  these,  (hat  you 
never  have  to  go  far  to  find,  and  ask  what  of  all  practicable  ways  of 
turning  the  moun*:ain  to  business  account  for  their  benefit  a  reason- 
ably refined  common-sense  would  lead  you  to  adopt  ? 

Would  you,  if  you  could  take  the  man  from  his  counting-room,  the 
woman  from  her  sick-room,  and  plant  them  both  as  quickly  and 
abruptly  as  possible  before  the  finest  view  on  the  mountain,  keep 
them  there  till  they  tired  of  it,  and  then  send  them  straightway  back 
again  ? 

Let  us  try  to  imagine  a  better  way. 

First,  then,  taking  our  friends  in  a  carriage,  we  should  find,  under 
wise  arrangements,  that  without  going  far  we  could  turn  into  a  road 
leading  toward  the  mountain,  by  which  noisy  and  jolting  pavements 
would  be  escaped.  In  this  road  there  would  be  no  heavy  grades  to 
overcome  ;  no  street  railways  to  be  avoided  ;  no  funeral  processions 
to  be  passed;  but  the  carriage,  moving  at  a  steady  pace,  and  with  the 
least  occasion  to  awaken  sadness,  irritation,  anxiety,  or  impatience, 
would,  in  a  few  moments,  have  slipped  easily  out  of  town,  and  be 
passing  along  a  shady,  soft,  and  quiet  suburban  street,  like  a  village 
highroad. 

This  would  be  lined  on  one  side  with  cottages,  before  which  trees 
would  be  rapidly  falling  out  of  lines  into  groups  and  spreading  from 
groups  into  groves.  The  village  would  be  divided  by  a  pretty  open 
green  with  a  quietly  undulating  surface,  skirting  which  our  road  would 
bend  away  to  avoid  too  steep  a  course.  Then,  getting  more  and  n^ore 
out  of  town,  it  would  wind  along  with  gentle  curves  as  the  movement 
of  the  ground  and  the  openings  among  the  trees  should  invite.  (This 
may  be  the  Cote  Placide  of  my  plan.) 

At  a  fork  of  the  ways  the  last  of  the  village  houses  would  be  passed, 
the  surface  grow  more  diversified,  stretches  of  pasture  land  would 
open  on  both  sides,  and  bits  of  stoney  ground  appear.  Pres- 
ently there  would  be  a  rocky  bank  in  a  dark  shade  of  hemlocks,  its 
base  lost  in  a  thicket  of  brambles,  brake,  golden-rod,  Soloman's  seal, 

60 


m 


i 


'i 


I  • 


%■  1; 


»^j 


and  fringed  gentian  ;  preluding  the  mountain.  Tlien  moving  along 
easily  higher  and  higher,  the  ground  would  become  more  rocky,  the 
herbage  more  tufty,  till,  at  a  turn  in  the  road,  views  through  the  trees 
would  open  :  on  one  side.'of  distant  steeples  over  houses  and  gardens; 
on  the  other,  of  a  stretch  of  woodland,     (This  from  the  Piedmont.) 

Then,  going  on,  the  prospect  on  each  side  would  be  more  confined, 
but  by  glimpses  between  the  trees  we  should  be  aware  that  not  far 
away  to  the  left  there  was  a  great  picturesque  declivity  shadowed  by 
hanging  woods.  Before  our  attention  had  been  fully  fixed  in  the  di- 
rection, it  would  be  drawn  off  by  a  broad  gap  among  the  trees  to  the 
right,  and  we  should  find  that  we  had  already  attained  a  sufficient 
elevation  to  command  a  far  view  to  the  northwest.  The  carriage 
would  stop,  and  we  should  look  upon  a  broad  country-side  with 
woods  and  fields,  orchards  and  gardens,  farm-houses  and  village 
spires,  all  sloping  gently  from  distant  blue  hills  down  to  a  stream  hid- 
den among  the  trees  of  the  intervening  dale.  (A  peaceful,  soothing 
prospect,  this  may  be  cheaply  made,  in  which,  though  accessible  in 
twenty  minutes  from  the  Post  Office,  and  at  a  third  the  cost  of  a  visit 
to  the  heights,  the  town  may  be  left  far  out  of  sight  and  further  out 
of  mind.) 

If  it  is  the  first  airing  of  the  convalescent  here  might  well  be  the  end 
of  her  day's  journey.  There  would  be  a  little  inn  near  by  at  which 
she  could  rest,  or  from  which  she  would  perhaps  be  served  with 
warm  milk  or  tea  ;  after  which,  varying  the  return  road,  within  an 
hour  from  the  time  of  starting,  she  would  be  back  again  in  her  arm- 
chair. 

But  going  on  after  a  few  minutes'  halt  the  scenery  would 
become  wilder  and  more  forest-like,  and  as  the  road,  winding 
where  spurs  of  the  ledge,  and  heaps  of  fallen  rock,  and  old 
water-ways  gave  opportunity,  led  higher  and  higher,  but  always 
by  easy  grades,  and,  without  apparent  effort,  following  a  course  invited 
by  nature,  the  trees  would  stand  closer  and  the  roadsides  be  crowded 
by  underwood.  Between  and  beneath  overhanging  foliage,  glimpses 
would  be  caught,  on  the  right,  of  the  near  crag-side  decked  with  dark 
bushy  evergreens  and  draped  with  creepers,  mosses,  and  blooming  Al- 
pine plants  ;  on  the  other  hand,  out  of  deep  shade,  through  chance 

6i 


h 


1 


Ilk* 


4 


loopholes  of  the  verdant  screen,  of  a  distant  gleaming  river  and  a 
sunny  expanse  beyond  it.     (From  the  Underfell.) 

The  crags  passed,  the  underwood  becoming  more  scattered,  the 
wood  more  open,  the  road  would  now  lead  along  a  mountain  slope  of 
(constantly  gaining  quietness,  with  gleams  of  sunlight  falling  upon 
ferny  dells  (the  Brakenfeli),  until  again,  the  tree  tops  opening  to  the 
right  and  left,  the  carriage  would  stop,  and  over  a  rapidly  declining, 
bosky  si'rface  another  outlook  would  be  gained,  revealing  a  lake-like 
expanse  of  water  lying  in  a  broad  valley  stretching  far  away  to  a  faint 
horizon,  beyond  which  the  evening  mists  would  be  gathering  to  re- 
ceive the  declining  sun. 

After  this,  the  road  would  presently  lead  out  upon  a  broad  high- 
land valley,  all  its  soft  features  bathed  in  sunshine  unbroken  by  foli- 
age (the  Glades).  From  its  wooded  borders  would  rise  rocky  and 
fir-crested  steeps,  but  crossing  the  space  between  them  and  following 
near  the  edge  of  the  northern  woods,  we  should  be  led,  by  quiet  curves 
and  with  an  easy  ascent,  to  a  position  I'rom  which  having  now  so 
long  left  the  city,  it  would  be  looked  down  upon  from  the  brink  of  a 
woody  cliff.  High  above  its  roofs,  beyond  the  harbor  with  its  stately 
ships,  a  great  champaign  would  open,  broken  by  a  few  noble  hills,  and 
beyond  all,  the  distant  billows  of  the  Adirondacks. 

Turning  back  from  this  scene  which,  were  it  not  familiar,  might  as 
yet  be  too  strong  for  our  purpose,  it  would  be  a  relief  to  course  along 
the  edge  of  woods  in  which,  while  the  surface  is  rough  and  the  trees 
tell  the  story  of  much  harder  exposure  than  those  we  have  seen  below, 
there  are  pleasant  sheltered  and  sunny  openings  in  which  groups  of 
children  will  be  at  play.     (The  Upperfell.) 

Still  rising,  the  road  will  then  lead  with  more  rapid  turns  along  the 
face  of  a  steeper  slope  till,  wheeling  upon  the  depression  of  a  narrow 
spur,  a  northern  outlook  is  gained,  with  the  lower  valley  of  the  great 
river  spreading  before  the  eye  ;  that  lovely  view  to  which  I  have  be- 
fore referred, 

At  the  next  move,  steeper  and  wilder  declivities  would  be  skirted, 
and  the  foreground  show  yet  more  evidence  of  elevation  and  the 
severity  of  its  winter  in  the  aspects  of  the  rocks  and  the  picturesque 
character  of  the  vegetation,  until  with  a  final  rapid  turn  the  carriage 

62 


I 

-  r, 


tv., 


would  stop  at  the  open  porch  of  a  timber-built  hospice,  so  situated 
upon  the  highest  rock  of  the  mountain  that  from  chairs  on  its  wide 
galleries  the  nearest  thing  to  be  seen  would,  on  all  sides,  be  a  broad 
mass  of  tree-top  foliage,  sloping  quietly  away  in  simple  undulations 
of  light  and  shade  to  a  rounded  edge  distinctly  defined  against  a 
much  lower  and  more  remote  middle  distance. 

Looking  over  this  deep  foreground  of  forest,  we  should  now  have 
before  us  more  extended  views  in  all  directions  than  we  had  had 
before  in  any.  Did  they  offer  nothing  for  our  enjoyment  but  a  roll- 
ing surface  of  grass  or  an  endless  prospec^  of  desert  sand,  with  only 
sky  and  clouds  to  relieve  its  monotony  of  color,  the  effect  would  be 
irresistible.  As  it  is,  what  element  of  interest  could  be  added  with- 
out crowding  ?  What  new  object  of  beauty  without  disturbance  ? 
Yet,  gradually  led  up  to  it  from  the  streets,  as  I  have  supposed  our 
friends  to  be,  so  that  it  comes  in  natural  and  consistent  sequence  of 
the  entire  preceding  experience,  the  impression  could  but  carry  to  a 
still  higher  point  the  restful,  soothing,  and  refreshing  influence  of  the 
entire  work. 

I  deplore  my  inability  to  present  the  purpose  which  good  manage- 
ment of  this  property  would  have  exclusively  before  it,  in  a  manner 
more  worthy  than  that  of  this  scrappy  memorandum  of  what  might 
be  offered  even  to  a  poor  invalid  taken  up  the  mountain  in  a  carriage. 
But  in  truth,  the  heart  of  the  argument  lies  in  something  which  it 
would  be  beyond  the  power  of  even  a  gifted  writer  to  represent,  and 
to  which  not  the  greatest  of  landscape  painters  could  nearly  do  justice. 

Yet  if  you  have  kindly  let  your  imagination  aid  me  you  can  hardly 
fail  to  see  wherein  the  advantage  of  the  property  lies,  not  simply  in 
the  direction  in  which  I  have  been  pointing,  as  a  sanitary  influence, 
but  also  as  an  educative  and  civilizing  agency,  standing  in  winning 
competition  against  the  sordid  and  corrupting  temptations  of  tlie 
town.  You  can  hardly  fail  to  realize  how  much  greater  wealth  it 
thus  places  within  your  reach  than  is  to  be  found  in  the  ordinary 
parks  and  gardens,  not  to  say  the  museums  and  galleries,  which  are 
the  pride  of  other  cities,  and  which  millions  have  been  thriflily  ex- 
pended to  obtain.  Nor  can  you  fail  to  recognize  that  what  remains 
for  your  securing  of  this  wealth  is  not  any  towering  constructions, 

63 


i«9 


[^ 


K 


rl 


I  I 


r"f 


■     jr'; 


:■  u 


^  f   f . 


i  •  ■  • 
f       a  1 

i       I       i    I 


«■    I  i  -  '■n 


■'•I 


V  I-   I,' 


■1fc 


if 
',1 

1 1  •;. 


princely  expenditure,  or  heavy  addition  to  your  taxation,  but  simply 
moderate  ability,  though  of  a  special  kind,  continuously  directed  m  a 
modest  and  frugal  way  by  a  suitable,  sincere,  consistent  purpose.  A 
purpose  in  which  there  shall  be  no  mixture,  for  instance,  of  the 
motives  proper  to  a  circus  or  a  variety  show,  to  military  parades  or 
agricultural  fairs,  to  race-courses  or  cemeteries.  An  intelligent  pur- 
pose to  bring  out  the  latent  loveliness  of  mountain  beauty,  which  you 
have  bought  with  the  property,  in  such  manner  as  shall  make  it  of 
the  highest  distinctive  value.  Thinking  over  all  that  I  have  advised 
to  be  done  as  an  affair  of  years,  take  the  largest  estimate  of  the  cost 
and  trouble  of  securing  what  is  necessary  to  it  that  you  can  ;  all  I 
ask  is  that  you  think  out  also  what  will  become  of  the  property,  what 
will  be  spent  and  what  will  be  lost,  if  it  shall  continue  long  to  be 
managed  with  no  more  distinct  purpose,  upon  no  more  firmly  de- 
fined principles  of  economy,  with  no  sharper  limits  to  the  enterprise 
of  successive  councils  and  commissioners  (leaping  from  the  ranks  to 
the  supreme  command  of  it)  than  economy  has  thus  far  been  held  to 
require. 


64 


»   ' 


«■ 


XVIII. 

Wisely  or  unwisely  you  have  bought  the  property,  and  must  do 
something  with  it.     You  will  probably  take  one  of  four  courses  : 

1st.  Let  it  run  to  waste,  in  which  case  your  purchase-money  will 
have  been  misspent. 

2d.  Make  such  ill-considered  improvements  upon  it  that  your  out- 
lay for  them  will  be  an  addition  to  that  previously  misspent. 

3d.   Make  extravagant  improvements,  misspending  more. 

4th.  Make  such  substantial,  well-devised,  economical  improvements 
that  the  result,  as  a  whole,  shall  repay  the  original  purchase-money, 
together  with  the  cost  of  the  improvements,  and  a  fair  percentage  of 
profit. 

I  trust  that  you  will  choose  to  take  the  last,  and  that,  choosing  it, 
you  will  find  the  plan  which  I  have  prepared,  adapted  to  aid  you 
in  doing  so. 

Do  not  think  of  it  as  if,  by  its  adoption,  you  were  binding  your- 
selves to  carry  it  out  at  once,  or  within  any  definite  period,  but  as  a 
plan,  with  reference  to  which  you  may,  with  advantage,  organize, 
direct  and  restrict  any  expenditures  which  you  shall  hereafter,  at  any 
time,  think  well  to  make  for  the  improvement  of  this  property. 

Do  not,  above  all  things,  imagine  that  it  can  enable  you  to  dispense 
with  the  constant  exercise  of  refined  discrimination  in  the  determi- 
nation of  working  details,  any  more  than  with  technical  skill,  or  with 
common  administrative  and  executive  ability. 


It  is  no  part  of  my  duty  to  advise  you  how  fast  and  how  far  to  go 
on  with  the  work  of  improvement,  but  I  may  suggest  that  a  lit- 

65 


H 


10 


t 


i     • 


4*! 


;  s 


*■•'    S' 


I        I 


I     ! 


'II 


tie  desultory  cobbling,  a  touch  here  and  a  touch  there,  and  that 
what  may  pass  for  somewhat  temporary  improvements,  are  almost 
sure,  not  simply  to  be  costly  with  reference  to  the  value  of  their  de- 
signed results,  but  to  make  obstructions  and  embarrassments  to  the 
essential  permanent  improvements  that  are  desirable. 

It  will  even  now  cost  you  more  to  carry  out  this  or  any  other  plan, 
you  may  adopt,  looking  to  a  permanently  satisfactory  improvement, 
and  the  result  will  be  less  valuable  than  would  be  the  case  if  you  had 
had  the  patience  to  do  nothing  until  you  could  be  sure  that  every 
stroke  would  tell  toward  a  maturely  studied  comprehensive  pur- 
pose. 

You  may,  as  a  matter  of  convenience,  or  of  necessity,  put  off  for 
years  entering  upon  well-organized,  steady  courses,  but  do  not  flatter 
yourselves  that  you  can  do  so  without  paying  a  round  penalty.  You 
will  find  that  this  is,  like  any  other  important  business,  left  at  loose 
ends.  The  difficulty  of  getting  it  into  an  economical  current  in- 
creases the  longer  it  is  pottered  with. 

To  proceed  economically,  you  need  to  have  a  small  staff  of  men 
who  are,  or  who  can  be  trained  to  be,  experts  in  three  or  four  main 
divisions  of  the  required  service,  and,  recollect  that  if  these  men  are 
well  chosen,  their  value  is  to  increase  with  every  year's  additional 
special  experience  in  the  locality,  and  that  their  work  is  to  be  con- 
tinuous work,  the  value  of  what  they  do  in  one  year  being  relative  to 
what,  in  doing  it,  they  have  intended  to  do  and  may  do  the  following 
year. 

These  leading  men  of  the  work  should  be  under  such  supervision 
and  discipline  as  to  insure  the  subordination  of  all  they  do  to  the  gen- 
eral ends  of  the  plan,  but  they  should  also  be  allowed,  each  man  within 
his  own  field,  that  measure  of  discretion  which  is  necessary  to  induce 
zealous,  continuous  effort,  and  pride  and  pleasure  in  its  gradually  ac- 
cruing results. 

Working  with  and  under  this  staff,  there  should  be  a  constant 
force — a  very  small  force,  if  you  please,  at  the  outset,  but  a  constant 
force — of  men  who  can  be  trained  and  depended  on  for  a  variety  of 
services,  some  of  which  will  never  fail  to  be  in  request.  Such  a  min- 
imum force,  constantly  employed,  will,  in  time,  accomplish  much 

66 


M  .  :■• 


more  than  a  much  larger  and  costlier  average  force  employed  irregu- 
larly. Then,  having  such  a  constant  force  as  a  steady  element,  to 
maintain  tone  and  method,  you  may,  as  from  time  to  time  you  feel 
able  and  disposed,  employ  temporarily  a  much  larger  force,  a  great 
deal  more  economically  than  would  be  otherwise  possible. 


67 


i   I 


h 


1 


t  *■ 


..«! 


(I    '■  h 
I         1  J 


Mi 


APPENDIX. 

EXPLANATION    OF    THE    PLAN. 

(I'he  drawing  herein  referred  to  was  exhibited  in  November,  1877, 
and,  to  aid  its  public  discussion,  litlaographed  copies  were  furnished 
the  commissioners  for  distribution.  The  following  explanation  is 
repeated  from  that  then  read  and  offered  in  manuscript  to  the 
press.) 


4"   " 

r 


i'  i 


J 

1      !l. , 


The  surveyor  s  maps  furnished  me  covered  a  little  more  ground 
than  has  at  any  time  been  expected  to  be  included  in  the  park,  and 
some  little  of  that  which,  at  the  time  they  were  made,  was  supposed 
to  beheld  by  the  city,  has  since,  as  I  understand,  been  ruled  out  The 
area  which  has  been  mapped  and  under  definite  consideration  with 
reference  to  the  plan  has  an  extent  of  550  acres.  Of  this,  I  have  re- 
garded 470  acres  as  already  held  by  the  city  ;  out  of  which,  30  is  to 
be  set  off  for  the  reservoirs,  and  for  streets  outside  the  park  proper. 
13order  strips  of  the  purchased  land  remaining,  which  (provided  cer- 
tain  restrictions  can  be  made  as  to  the  manner  in  which  they  shall  be 
used)  can  be  spared  from  the  park,  and  which  I  recommend  to  be  sold 
will  deduct  an  additional  area  of  60  acres.  A  rectification  of  boundar- 
ies of  the  remaining  land,  which  is  a  part  of  my  proposition,  would 
require  the  city  to  obtain  land  which  it  does  not  now  own  to  the  ex- 
tent of  ten  acres,  and  would  allow  an  equal  amount  to  be  thrown  out 
in  addition  to  that  before  stated.  This  is  arranged  with  reference  to 
possible  exchanges  with  private  owners.  That  is  to  say,  there  are 
ten  acres  of  land  to  be  deducted  in  small  bits,  and  ten  acres  in  small 
bits  to  be  added.  (All  these  are  estimates  in  round  numbers.)  With 
these  deductions  and  adjustments,  the  area  remaining  for  the  park 
proper  would  be  380  acres. 

68 


f  ? 


i 


Of  the  80  acres  of  land  you  now  hold,  which  it  is  proposed  should 
be  exchanged  and  sold,  56  are  in  that  part  of  the  property  nearest 
the  town,  and  in  such  relations  to  that  reserved  for  public  use,  that 
any  judicious  step  in  the  improvement  of  either  will  benefit  the 
other.  This  (56  acres)  you  will  see  shown  on  the  plan  in  building 
plots,  suitable  for  villas  and  cottages  fronting  on  the  park,  and  laid 
open  by  winding  roads  of  easy  grade. 


M 


I  suppose  it  is  understood  that  the  larger  part  of  the  land  taken 
for  the  park  is  of  such  a  character  that  it  would  be  a  misfortune  to 
the  city  if  it  should  be  built  upon,  as  its  taxable  value  would  not  be 
equivalent  to  the  cost  of  making  and  maintaining  the  highway  im- 
provements necessary  to  public  health  and  convenience.  The  roads 
now  proposed  between  the  park  and  the  land  to  be  sold  are,  how- 
ever, so  adjusted  to  the  topography,  that  this  land  may  be  opened  for 
such  private  uses  as  will  be  consistent  with  the  interests  of  the  pub- 
lic, to  the  best  advantage,  at  the  least  cost.  The  roadsides  are  in- 
tended, as  you  may  observe,  to  be  planted  by  the  city,  and  the  land  to 
be  sold  under  such  reservations  as  will  prevent  buildings  from  being 
placed  within  20  feet  of  the  highway  and  encourage  private  planting. 

I  do  not  say  that  the  arrangement  as  it  would  thus  stand  is  pre- 
cisely what  I  should  advise  if  I  had  only  the  distant  and  permanent 
interests  of  the  city  in  view,  still  less  if  I  wished  to  make  the  finest 
thing  of  its  kind  possible  of  your  park.  There  are  three  points  at 
which  I  lament  that  more  land  should  not  have  been  bought,  and  at 
which,  as  you  get  to  estimate  the  value  and  understand  the  conditions 
of  the  value  of  the  park,  I  think  it  probable  that  you  may  wish  here- 
after to  make  annexations  to  it,  but  in  the  present  condition  of  the 
city  I  think  it  better  that  the  proposition  should  take  the  form  given 
it  in  the  drawing. 

It  may  be  observed  that  the  Cote  Placide  district,  north  of  the 
mountain  proper  (both  sides  of  the  line  of  E'eury  Street),  is,  com- 
paratively speaking,  tame  and  featureless,  and  ttiat  it  is  tolerably  well 
adapted  to  be  built  upon,  and  I  may  be  asked  wh.vt  sufficient  advan- 
tages are  to  be  gained  by  including  any  portion  of  it  in  the  park,  or, 
at  least,  why,  in  the  desire  to  reduce  the  area  of  the  park  to  a  mini- 
mum, more  of  it  can  not  be  thrown  out  and  a  simpler  street  plan 
adopted  ?  Why  especially  should  the  straight  line  of  Bleury  Street 
not  be  retained  ?    The  answer  is  : 

1st.  That  every  curve  of  the  roads  here  gives  a  course  which 
is  practically  shorter  than  that  of  a  straight  line,  because  of  the 
easier  grade  which  is  obtained,  and  that  if  the  northern  boundary  of 
the  park  were  pushed  back,  under  no  straight  and  rectangular  street 

69 


'M 


:1'^ '  I' 


ti 


f  * 


t! 

if! 


:*!( 


\^\n-  H 


4^  r 


t 


\ 


hi  •■; 
1 1 '  ■»■ 


system  in  this  district  would  it  be  possible  to  reach  a  park  entrance 
in  carriages,  except  at  a  slow  pace  and  tediously. 

2d.  It  is  desirable  to  interpose  between  the  city  and  the  rugged- 
ness  of  the  mountain  an  intermediate  passage  of  scenery  of  a.  less  pic- 
turesque, more  beautiful,  less  wild  and  romantic,  more  comely  and 
placid  type,  and  the  ground  in  question  offers  an  opportunity  which, 
properly  improved,  will  answer  that  purpose. 

3(1.  Holding  the  land  in  question,  you  have  the  opportunity  of 
stretching  out  the  hand  of  welcome  to  that  part  of  the  city  from 
which  the  park  will  otherwise  be  most  distant.  You  may  make  a 
pleasure  of  what  would  otherwise  be  a  toil  in  approaching  the  moun- 
tain from  it. 

4th.  Taking  as  much  of  this  ground  and  improving  it  as  I  pro- 
pose, you  will  offer  to  all  those  who  can  not  afford  the  time,  exer- 
tion or  expense  of  getting  up  the  mountain,  but  who  can  spare  a  half 
hour  for  a  stroll  or  drive,  an  agreeable  and  healthful  resort.  As  the 
city  grows,  and  is  built  out  on  the  north  and  west,  the  number  who 
will  daily  find  this  a  privilege  will  be  larger  than  the  number  of 
those  who  will  be  able  to  go  upon  the  mountain  proper.  This  I 
think  a  binding  consideration. 

5th.  In  the  early  Spring  and  the  late  Autumn  there  will  be  many 
days  when  this  lower  park  will  be  available  for  recreation,  while  the 
air  of  the  upper  would  be  found  too  harsh  to  be  agreeable  or  useful, 
especially  to  delicate  persons. 

These  advantages  of  retaining  a  considerable  part  of  the  lower 
ground  seem  to  me  so  obvious  and  so  conclusive,  that  I  should  not 
have  thought  it  necessary  to  present  them  were  I  not  informed  that 
plans  have  been  discussed  and  are  now  in  suspense,  by  which  they 
would  be  sacrificed. 

You  may,  perhaps,  find  it  more  difficult  to  fully  justify  so  great  a 
reduction  of  the  park  area  as  is  here  proposed,  and  upon  this  point 
I  can  only  suggest  that  in  considering  it  you  should  not  fail  to  fore- 
see the  effect  of  the  proposed  border  plantations,  and  to  recognize 
how  the  objection  to  the  proposition  in  this  respect  will  be  lessened 
by  the  interposition  of  the  anticipated  skirting  of  gardens,  cottages, 
and  villas  between  the  park  and  any  possible  tall,  compactly  associ- 
ated buildings  hereafter  to  come  in  beyond  them. 


Taking  a  large  view  of  the  interests  of  the  city,  I  can  not  say  that 
I  think  the  boundaries  of  the  park  entirely  fortunate.  It  is  much 
to  be  regretted  that  you  should  be  so  cramped  between  the  Crags  and 
the  Allan  and  Redpath  properties.  A  few  yards  greater  breadth 
here  would  add  more  to  the  value  of  the  park  than  you  lose  by  throw- 


70 


ing  out  double  as  many  rods  elsewhere.  It  is  unfortunate  also  that 
the  boundaries  of  the  park  do  not  fall  so  that  a  good  broad  road  of 
easy  grade  can  everywhere  follow  them. 

1  must  make  an  unpleasant  suggestion  in  recommending  an  early 
consideration  of  the  question  wlietht-r,  if  your  city  prospers,  the 
time  may  not  come  when  a  thoroughfare  from  north  to  south  will  be 
required  as  near  as  practicable  to  the  west  boundary  of  the  park.  I 
am  sorry  that  the  topography  forbids  any  arrangement  for  the  pur- 
pose in  connection  with  the  park.  The  slight  changes  of  liie  west  line 
of  the  park  which  I  recommend,  in  addilicm  to  those  abx-ady  ar- 
ranged, are  designed  only  to  avoid  waste  from  awkward  corners  and 
misfits. 

The  policy  originally  adopted  of  dovetailing  the  city  into  the  park 
on  the  east,  by  a  system  of  capes  and  bays,  determined,  I  presume, 
simply  by  the  accident  of  private  occupation,  will  eventually  cause 
a  good  deal  of  inconvenience.  Following  my  own  judgment,  I  should 
have  planned  to  sweep  it  entirely  away,  west  of  the  east  line  of  Sir 
Hugh  Allan's  grounds,  and  obtained  a  more  economical  arrangement 
at  any  necessary  cost.  I  feel  sure  that  it  could  be  at  no  cost  that 
would  not  soon  be  outweighed  by  advantages  gained  both  by  the 
public  and  by  the  property  owners. 

East  of  Sir  Hugh's,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  body  of  land  m 
the  park,  as  represented  in  the  maps  given  me,  but  which,  since  my 
plan  has  been  formed  with  reference  to  it,  I  have  been  advised  will 
have  to  be  thrown  out.  This  would  be  of  great  value  to  be  re- 
tained. There  is  no  other  which  could  be  sooner  and  at  less  cost 
made  serviceable.  I  should  not  have  laid  out  roads  in  other  parts 
of  the  park  as  I  have  done,  had  I  not  counted  on  this  land,  and, 
much  work  having  already  been  done,  reckoning  upon  it,  I  consider  a 
part  of  it  indispensable.  I  have,  therefore,  adopted,  in  the  last  re- 
vision of  my  drawing,  a  compromise  arrangement,  which,  when  well 
considered,  will,  I  sincerely  trust,  harmonize  all  interests. 

I  have  to  speak  of  but  one  more  exterior  question — that  of  the 
carriage  approaches. 

You  have,  unfortunately,  used  in  Montreal  the  common  frontier 
method  of  laying  out  streets,  of  which  the  only  recommendation  is 
that  it  requires  no  thought,  and  can  be  as  well  done  by  an  infatit 
after  a  month's  schooling  in  a  kindergarten  as  by  the  ablest  engi- 
neer, and  it  happens,  in  consequence,  that  south  of  University 
Street  there  is  no  way  of  approaching  the  mountain  at  all  suitable 
for  general  driving.  ,    i-u 

A  pony,  which  would  easily  take  a  phaeton  with  a  lady  and  children 
to  the  top  of  the  mountain,  if  driven  around  by  the  way  of  Bleury 
Street,  would  be  entirely  unequal  to  taking  the  same  load  up  such 
grades  as  those  of  Peel  Steeet  (i  in  7),  or  McTavish  Street  (i  in  9).  As 

71 


[I 


l\ 


;l 


I': 


rli 


r 


ii^ 


Mil! 

f.  V 

I 


;'!| 


if 

I; 

I'     'i    : 


i 


■  ;i  ■  Pi  ^ 
4*  " 


ii 


I  f  ■ 


to  Drummond  Street,  your  present  arrangement,  as  I  understand  from 
the  maps,  makes  it  a  cul-de-sac,  always  a  very  bad  thing  anywhere  in 
a  large  town.  This  will,  I  jiresunie,  by  and  by,  be  remedied  by 
ramp-ways,  connecting  it  with  Tine  Avenue,  but  even  then  its  grades 
will  be  worse  than  those  of  Peel  Street. 

Taking  the  best  of  these  routes  for  approaching  the  park,  two 
horses  will  be  needed,  on  an  average,  to  do,  with  some  urging,  strain, 
and  risk,  what  one  will  do  comfortably  on  the  northern  route. 

The  disadvantage  of  the  southern  part  of  the  city,  in  this  respect,  is 
not  generally  recognized,  because,  as  yet,  a  trip  to  the  mountain  is 
necessarily  somewhat  tedious,  and  so  far  a  novel  experience,  that  you 
have  not  begun  to  look  after  the  small  economies  of  pleasure  in  it  ; 
but  it  is  one  which  will  be  folt  more  and  more  as  the  mountain  comes 
into  habitual  use.  The  only  remedy  I.  am  able  to  suggest  is  that  of 
raising  the  grade  of  the  lower  part  of  McGill  Street  (above  Sher- 
brooke),  encroaching  slightly  on  the  college  grounds  below  the  corner 
of  Carleton,  and  passing  around  to  the  east  of  the  reservoir,  with  cer- 
tain comparatively  inexpensive  changes  in  the  course  and  grade  of  the 
existing  road.  It  is  practicable  in  this  way  to  get  a  grade  nowhere 
steeper  than  I  in  15,  which  would  be  a  gain  of  great  value,  and  I  re- 
commend the  suggestion  to  consideration  as  one  of  the  first  impor- 
tance. It  has  been  successively  submitted  to  your  former  and  present 
city  surveyors,  and  received  the  hearty  approval  of  each. 

[Drawings  exhibiting  this  proposition,  with  profiles  showing  the 
great  advantages  of  grade  to  be  gained  by  it,  were  prepared  with  the 
approval  of  the  city  engineer,  and  laid  before  the  City  Council. 
Lithographed  copies  of  them  were  also  prepared  for  distribution  to 
those  interested.] 


We  are  now  ready  to  pass  v/ithin  the  boundaries  of  the  park  and 
consider  the  contemplated  constructions  in  roads,  walks,  and  other  nec- 
essary matters.  That  what  is  designed  in  this  respect  may  be  intelli- 
gibly presented,  it  is  shown  on  a  map  in  which  the  natural  conditions 
of  the  surface,  in  so  far  as  it  is  essential  that  they  should  be  taken 
into  account  in  forming  a  judgment  of  the  plan,  are  elaborately 
delineated. 

Standing  at  a  little  distance,  you  may  readily  trace  out  the  general 
features  of  the  mountain  with  which  you  are  familiar.  Here  you  find 
the  surface  nearly  flat  ;  here  moderately  inclined  ;  here  is  a  steep  de- 
clivity ;  here  again  it  is  smooth  and  meadow-like  ;  here  it  is  broken 
with  smell  ledges  ;  here  with  bolder  masses  of  rock. 

The  strong  bounding  lines  and  distinctions  of  tint  will  enable  you 

7a 


l" 


11. 


to  readily  distinguish  the  proposed  roads,  the  vnlhr,  anu  the  build- 
ings of  vaiious  classes,  and  you  will  find  little  dilticulty  in  understand- 
ing  the  ))osition  of  each,  and  its  relation,  throughout  its  entire  length, 
to  the  topography.  This  is  the  more  important  question  to  he  dis- 
cussed at  this  stage  of  your  enterprise,  and  to  avoid  confusion  in  pre- 
senting my  recommendations  in  respect  to  it,  the  design  with  regard 
to  the  imi)rovement  of  the  natural  elements  is  developed  only  so  far 
as  to  show  by  the  pale  green  tint,  which  stands  for  luif,  and  by 
symbols,  which  indicate  trees  and  bushes,  the  general  disposition  of 
foliage  and  open  ground. 

That  the  indications  of  the  elevation  and  inclinations  of  surface, 
with  reference  to  the  discussion  of  the  artificial  features,  may  not  be 
too  much  put  out  of  sight,  trees  are  not  represented  standing  as  close- 
ly or  as  much  covering  the  ground  as  ihey  are  in  reality  expected 
to,  especially  in  the  lower  parts  of  the  declivities,  and  along  the 
edges  of  the  roads  and  walks  near  the  base  of  the  Crags. 

From  my  saying  this,  please  not  to  infer  that  any  of  the  trees  now 
standing  should  be  left,  or  that  otiiers  should,  on  any  consideration, 
be  planted  uporrany  of  the  few  comparatively  broad  openings.  It  is 
essential  to  the  design  that  the  surface  should  be  of  clear  unbroken 
turf. 

As  a  general  rule,  in  laying  out  parks,  the  principal  roads,  walks, 
and  other  constructions  should  be   so  disposed  as  to  leave  the  central 

f)arts  unbroken,  so  that  broad,  quiet  landscape  effects  may  be  had  in 
ooking  across  them  ;  at  the  same  time,  they  should  be  kept  far 
enough  from  the  boundaries  to  allow  exterior  objects  which  may  not 
be  consistent  with  the  designed  scenes,  to  be  screened  from  view  by 
border  plantations,  and  to  admit  of  such  a  free,  natural,  and  interest- 
ing treatment  of  the  intervening  space  as  to  avoid  the  suggestion  of 
limit  and  confinement. 

Petty  sinuosities  and  all  sharp  turns  or  angles  in  the  course  of  roads 
or  walks  are  undesirable;  and  it  should  be  possible  to  go  from  any  point 
in  the  park  to  another  distant  point  without  excessive  indirectness  of 
course  ;  certainly,  without  so  doubling  on  a  course  as  to  produce  an 
impression  of  a  return  to  the  starling-point.  It  is  not  desirable  that 
visitors  should  be  compelled  to  return  for  any  considerable  distance 
over  the  same  ground,  and  get  the  same  views  twice. 

You  will  observe  that  not  one  of  the  desiderata  thus  indicated  is 
fully  met  in  this  design  map,  and  if  the  plan  were  shown  as  a  diagram 
and  considered  without  a  knowledge  of  the  remarkable  natural  features 
to  which  the  design  is  fitted,  it  might  seem  to  defy  sound  principles, 

A  careful  examination  will,  however,  suggest,  I  believe,  just 
occasion  for  all  such  apparent  eccentricities.  The  topography 
will  account  for  nearly  every  curve  of  road  or  walk.  Here,  for 
example,  you  observe  that  a  slightly  darker  shade   upon  the  surface 

73 


M 


\{ 


it; 


IW 


if 


^ 


■h 


■ 


:i 


•  .;>' 


4  It    r 


-r 


indicates  a  little  swell  upon  the  gentle  slope  of  the  Cote  Placide. 
The  road  approaching  it,  if  it  were  carried  straight  on,  would  either 
be  made  of  steeper  grade  than  is  desirable,  or  this  would  be  avoided 
at  the  expense  of  a  heavy  cutting,  T  he  road,  as  you  see,  bends  slightly 
away,  therefore,  and  winds  around  the  swell  to  the  higher  ground  be- 
yond it.  Mere,  again,  the  road  avoids  a  rocky  ledge  ;  here,  approach- 
ing the  borders  of  the  property,  it  doubles  around  a  knoll  and  turning 
into  the  Piedmont  district,  keeps  steadily  working  at  light  grades  up 
the  hill  ;  here  it  creeps  diagonally  through  a  depression  of  a  wall  of 
rock  and  doubles  again  so  as  to  reach  a  point  of  view  in  the  Underfell, 
commanding  the  western  prospect,  and  so  on. 


I  will  call  your  attention  to  certain  of  the  objects  to  which  the 
course  of  the  drive  is  adapted  : 

First,  you  will  observe  that  it  puts  all  parts  of  the  property  very 
closely  under  contribution  to  the  driver's  pleasure.  Any  point  on  the 
park,  which  you  may  wish  to  visit,  can  be  driven  to  within  about  2oo 
yards,  and  there  are  but  few  points  that  can  not  be  ajjproached  by  a 
carriage  wiihin  half  that  distance.  Next,  it  carries  the  visitor,  not 
directly  to  every  particularly  interesting  point  of  view — for  it  is  de- 
sirable that  there  should  be  some  such  points  held  in  reserve  as  an  in- 
ducement to  walking, — but  to  such  a  succession  of  points  that  each 
characteristic  variety  of  scenery  to  which  the  property  is  adapted  will 
be  seen  to  advantage,  and  distant  views  obtained  in  every  direction  ; 
so  that,  in  fact,  the  horizon  may  be  swept  in  the  course  of  the  drive. 
Third,  it  offers,  though  this  may  not  at  once  be  obvious,  all  practicable 
directness  between  different  parts  of  the  mountain,  and  especially  be- 
tween the  lower  and  higher  parts.  The  highest  point  of  the  moun- 
tain is  near  the  present  meteorological  station.  The  central  point  is 
about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  to  the  south  of  it.  The  lowest  point,  and 
that  most  distant  from  the  centre,  is  near  the  Hotel  Dieu.  If  you 
wished  to  go  from  the  latter  point  or  from  any  other  on  the  border  of 
the  park,  on  the  town  side,  either  to  the  central  or  to  the  highest 
point  of  the  mountain,  in  the  shortest  time,  with  ease  and  pleasure, 
notwithstanding  the  great  apparent  tortuousness  necessary  in  the  drive 
in  order  to  accomplish  the  two  first  of  the  above-stated  objects,  a 
better  route  for  the  third  could  hardly  be  taken  than  that  laid  down. 

As  to  the  object  of  securing  interesting  foreground  conditions  in  the 
view  from  the  drive,  what  I  have  before  said  will  have  sufficiently  ex- 
plained the  motives  of  the  design. 

A  few  words  as  to  the  grades  of  the  drive  : 

A  pleasure-road,  in  passing  over  broken  and  undulating  ground, 
should  avoid  a  perfect  monotony  of  grade  as  well  as  of  course.     Its 

74 


V'X 


inclination  should  be  such  that  a  good  horse,  with  a  fair  load,  can  be 
kept  moving  at  a  trot  without  urging  in  going  up  hill,  and  without 
holding  back  ingoing  down.  Your  main  road,  as  laid  out,  is  adapted 
to  meet  these  requirements.  Its  average  grade  is  i  in  37,  a  grade 
upon  which,  in  coaching  days,  the  mail  went  up  hill  at  the  rate  of  ten 
miles  an  hour,  and  came  down  safely  with  equal  speed.  The  maxi- 
mum grade  is  i  in  20,  and  occurs  but  twice,  holding  in  neither  case  for 
more  than  a  hundred  yards.  There  are  numerous  nearly  level,  shorl. 
stretches,  and  at  a  few  points  there  is,  for  a  few  yards,  a  slight  reverse 
of  the  inclination.  The  excavation  or  embankment  required  to  obtain 
these  grades  rarely  exceeds  three  feet  upon  the  centre  line  of  the  road. 

The  surface  of  the  drive  is  designed  to  be  everywhere  slightly  below 
that  of  its  immediate  borders,  and,  in  making  it,  it  is  intended  that 
the  b  orders  shall  be  graded  in  connection  with  it  in  such  manner  that 
it  shall  seem  to  fit  a  course  marked  out  and  prepared  centuries  ago  by 
nature.  Any  appearance  of  a  retaining  wall  on  one  side,  or  of  an 
embankment  on  the  other  ;  any  plane  glacis-like  slopes,  and  any  bald 
or  lumpy  surfaces  are,  of  course,  to  be  avoided.  Whatever  work  is 
necessary  to  prevent  them,  and  to  make  the  borders  what  they  sliould 
be,  is  to  be  regarded  as  one  work  with  the  grading  of  the  drive. 

The  distance  from  Bleury  Street  entrance  to  the  highest  point  of 
the  mountain,  by  the  main  drive,  will  be  a  little  over  4  miles.  From 
Carleton  Street  entrance,  3^  miles.  From  Drummond  Street  entrance, 
2f  miles.  The  length  of  the  main  drive,  with  the  link  forming  the 
circuit  on  the  heights,  will  be  4f  miles.  The  length  of  all  pleasure- 
drives  within  the  park,  ji-  miles.  (This  includes  the  by-road  to  the 
superintentendency  and  the  two  approaches  at  the  Cotes  des  Neiges 
end,  but  not  the  roads  along  the  boundary  nor  the  short  cross-roads 
for  general  use). 

The  public  has  been  informed  by  a  publication,  for  which  I  am 
not  responsible,  and  which  I  regret,  that  the  road  now  made  fails  to 
meet  my  instructions  or  intentions. 

The  building  of  this  road,  you  will  recollect,  was  set  about  precipi- 
tately, to  meet  an  emergency  of  public  charity.  I  was  not  informed 
ihat  it  had  been  undertaken  until  it  was  far  advanced  toward  com- 
pletion. It  was  prosecuted  under  circumstances  which,  had  there 
been  an  intention  to  regard  landscape  details,  would  have  made  it 
very  difficult  to  do  so.  The  situation  was  bleak,  the  ground  was 
deeply  covered  with  snow,  the  mercury  was  often  as  low  as  10°  and 
sometimes  20°  below  zero,  and  the  wind  often  by  no  means  moderate. 
Nevertheless,  had  the  road  been  made  purely  for  an  industrial  pur- 
pose, or  even  as  a  means  of  access  to,  or  of  connection  between,  certain 
points  of  view  upon  the  mountain,  which  was  quite  all  that  any  one 
concerned  had  in  view,  it  could  hardly  have  been  made  with  better 
judgment  or  economy.     On  the   other  hand,  it  must  be  recognized 

75 


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1: 

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1 

,    1 

f   . 

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&: 

11' 

:-I 

:V 

that,  had  it  been  desirable  to  display  barrenness  on  its  borders,  and  to 
make  the  fact  apparent  that  the  road  was  a  rude  and  hasty  construc- 
tion, made  with  no  regard  to  those  considerations  for  local  and  fore- 
ground scenery  which  I  sought  to  explain  in  the  early  part  of  this  dis- 
course, the  same  amount  of  labor  could  hardly  have  been  better  ap- 
plied to  the  object. 

You  must  accept  the  result  as  a  misfortune  for  your  scheme, — a 
misfortune  which  it  should  be  your  aim  to  qualify  as  far  as  possible. 
The  construction  of  the  Cotes  des  Neiges  reservoir  will  give  you  most 
valuable  material  for  the  purpose,  and  from  the  skill  with  which  Mr. 
McGibbon  has  used  the  small  means  at  his  command  during  the  pres- 
ent year,  I  believe  the  qualifications  maj'  be  greater  than  I  at  first 
thought  practicable.  In  my  detailed  plans  for  the  road  (which  were 
never  seen  by  any  one  engaged  in  its  construction,  and  are  lost),  pro- 
vision had  been  made  against  the  danger,  and  the  appearance  of  danger^ 
of  carriages  running  off  the  embankment,  an  object  which  remains 
very  desirable. 

One  more  consideration  as  to  the  drives. 

As  a  general  rule  in  laying  out  a  park,  a  visitor  should  not  be  com- 
pelled to  travel  twice  over  the  same  ground,  but  should  be  free  to  go 
out  upon  one  side  and  return  upon  another,  as  those  on  foot  will  be  abie, 
to,  for  example,  on  Mount  Royal,  if  this  design  is  carried  out.  By 
large  expv,iise  a  return  road  from  the  heights  could  be  brought  down 
on  the  north  side,  but  were  expense  at  this  time  of  less  consideration, 
or  if  the  necessary  fund  for  the  purpose,  should,  in  the  future,  be 
offered  the  city  as  a  gift,  I  would  not  advise  such  a  road  to  be  built, 
partly  for  the  reason  that  it  would  necessarily  greatly  injure  very  in- 
teresting natural  features,  just  as,  in  a  much  less  degree,  the  road 
already  made  has  done,  but  also  because  variety  in  this  case  is  little 
needed.  The  aspects  in  which  the  s(  encry  of  the  mountain  side  will 
be  seen  in  coming  down  are  highly  interesting  and  very  different  from 
those  which  will  have  been  enjoyed  in  going  up,  with  the  face  hi  the 
reverse  direction. 

There  is  also,  as  I  have  before  suggested,  an  advantage  in  i.<^lJing 
something  of  a  little  importance  in  reserve  from  the  drive.  It  is  not 
to  be  desired  that  everything  of  interest  on  your  park  should  be  seen 
by  a  man  lolling  in  his  carriage  for  an  hour.  It  is  better  that  all 
should  have  some  inducement  to  walk,  and  that  those  who  can  not 
afford  to  drive  should  have  something  '.c  themselves,  as  this  design 
provides  at  the  north  end  of  the  Crags  for  example.  As  for  those 
who  cannot  toil  up  steep  hillsides  but  must  be  carried  wherever  they 
go  on  the  mountain,  special  provision  is  made  for  them  as  you  will 
see  presently. 

I  now  ask  attention  to  the  system  of  foot  communication. 

It  traverses  all  parts  of  the  park,  you  may  observe,   rather  more 

76 


completely  than  that  of  the  drives,  but  offers  more  direct  routes  for  all 
purposes  of  pleasure-seeking  This  is  feasible,  partly  because  a  man 
can  walk  without  excessive  exertion  on  a  grade  about  twice  as  steep 
as  that  upon  which  a  horse  without  excessive  exertion  can  draw  what 
would  be  an  easy  load  for  him  on  a  level,  and  also  because  a  foot- 
man can  ascend  declivities  by  stairs.  Stairs,  as  you  see,  are  intro- 
duced at  several  points,  both  upon  the  crags  and  upon  the  minor 
declivities.  These  stairs  should  be  arranged  and  studied  in  detail 
with  great  care  to  make  them  easy  of  use  for  women  and  children, 
and  pleasant  to  all.  They  should  be  divided  by  numerous  landings, 
and  some  of  them  should  have  broad  covered  balconies  furnished 
with  low  seats  ;  they  should  be  deftly  fitted  into,  not  made  to  bridge 
over  the  ground.  The  landings  should  be  roofed  for  shelter  in 
showers,  and  the  stairs  shaded  by  vines  on  trellises.  The  steps  should 
not  be  less  than  fourteen  inches  in  the  tread,  nor  more  than  six  inches 
on  the  rise. 

Bear  in  mind  that  the  stairs,  like  every  thing  else  on  the  park, 
should  not  be  simply  means  of  transit,  but,  as  far  as  with  reasonable 
expense  they  can  be  made,  consistently  with  perfect  adaptation  to 
their  special  purposes,  means  by  which  a  greater  enjoyment  of  the 
beauty  of  nature  will  occur  because  of  the  art  which  they  embody. 
They  may  be  of  wood  with  rough  surface  except  on  the  seats  and 
hand-rails,  with  many  tool-marks  of  the  axe  and  adze,  yet  should  ex- 
hibit the  talent  of  your  best  architects,  for  nothing  is  harder  to  get 
than  good  rude  work  fitted  to  nature. 

But  when  the  best  has  been  done  to  make  the  stairs  easy  and 
agreeable,  there  will  always  be  a  large  number  of  persons,  to  whom 
a  daily  walk  of  several  miles  upon  paths  of  moderate  grade,  and  to 
whom  the  ascent  of  the  mountain  by  such  paths,  would  be  a  great 
advantage,  who  could  not  mount  some  of  these  flights  of  stairs  with- 
out injury  or  risk  to  which  they  should  not  be  suV)jectcd.  Persons 
with  weak  lungs,  with  disorders  of  the  heart,  with  a  tendency  to 
apoplexy,  or  to  congestion  or  hemorrhage  at  any  point,  and  little 
children,  should  l^e  kept  away  from  them.  Elderly,  rheumatic, 
gouty,  and  all  weakly  people,  and  parents  and  nurses  with  baby- 
wagons,  must  avoid  them. 

Even  when,  however,  you  shall  have  made  the  lower  part  of  the 
park  as  convenient  and  attractive  as  possible,  it  will  still  be  hard  to 
limit  the  movements  of  all  these  classes  to  that  region  or  to  compel 
them  to  take  carriage  to  go  higher. 

For  this  reason  and  also  because  to  the  great  body  of  all  classes 
those  forms  of  quiet  and  easy  exercise  which  are  favorable  to  con- 
templative enjoyment  are  the  most  valuable,  two  routes  are  arranged, 
by  which  the  highest  and  most  remote  parts  of  the  mountain  can  be 
reached  without  the  use  of    stairs    and  without   excessively  steep 


77 


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t   »■  . 


I 


grades.  The  two  are  so  connected  as  to  form  a  circuit  walk  within 
the  park  about  three  miles  in  length,  and  so  also  that  by  taking  in  a 
short  piece  of  the  sidewalk  of  Pine  Avenue  a  round  tour  of  four 
miles  could  be  made  by  an  invalid  in  a  rolling-chair,  exhibiting  all  the 
characteristic  scenery  of  the  mountain  and  the  most  extensive  distant 
views,  without  twice  crossing  the  same  point. 

(All  that  lias  been  said  as  to  the  management  of  the  skirting  of 
the  drives  applies,  of  course,  to  the  skirting  of  the  walks.) 

The  total  length  of  walks  laid  down  upon  the  map  within  the 
park,  including  the  sidewalks  of  the  cross-roads  and  the  walk  of  the 
grand  promenade,  is  a  little  less  than  13  miles  (12.9). 

I  will  now  refer  to  a  few  other  constructions  indicated  on  the  map. 

You  may  notice  that,  at  various  points  on  the  drive,  where  there  are 
particularly  fine  distant  prospects  to  be  had,  rests  or  concourses  are 
thrown  out  so  that  those  halting  may  not  block  the  way.  At  three 
points  you  will  see  houses  indicated  which  are  designed  to  have  all 
the  accommodations  of  inns  on  a  moderately  large  scale,  except  sleep- 
ing rooms. 

That  in  the  Underfell  is  for  the  lower  park,  and  as  people  here  are 
not  far  from  their  hom'js,  it  is  small,  but  should  this  ground  become, 
in  process  of  time,  very  popular,  the  situation  admits  of  ai  much  en- 
largement of  the  house  as  may  be  desirable. 

At  the  highest  point  in  the  Upperfell — the  crown  of  the  mountain, 
— there  is  a  larger  establishment  intended  to  have  a  deck  and  low 
tower  from  which  visitors  will  overlook  the  trees  on  the  adjoining 
slopes,  and  command  a  view  all  around  the  horizon.  I.  should  be  no 
higher  and  in  no  way  more  conspicuous  than  is  necessary  to  accom- 
plish this  object.  This  house  is  designed  for  summer  use,  and  to 
supply  only  light  refreshments. 

Another  house  in  a  lower  and  more  sheltered  situation  to  the  south- 
ward, on  the  edge  of  the  Brackenfell,  is  to  be  kept  open  through  the 
year.  A  range  of  shedding  is  connected  with  it,  and  it  is  designed  to 
provide  for  man  and  beast,  more  particularly  to  meet  all  the  require- 
ments of  pic-nic  parties  in  tiie  ISrackenfell. 

Adjoining  it,  is  the  establishment  of  the  administration  :  barns, 
stabling,  cart-sheds,  storage-yards,  tool-rooms,  and  the  office  and 
residence  of  the  superintendent.  The  situation  is  chosen  as  that 
from  which  all  parts  of  the  park,  on  an  average,  will  be  most  easily 
accessible  to  loaded  teams,  or,  in  other  words,  taking  elevation  into 
account,  as  substantially  the  most  central  for  the  work  to  be  done. 
It  is  also  screened  by  the  adjoining  high  ground  from  that  part  of  the 
park  which  will  be  the  most  frequented  by  the  pul^lic,  and  zvi/Z  be 
conspicuous  fi'om  none  of  tite  viaiti  routes  of  passage.     It  is  well  shel- 


•(    ■  I 


tered  from  the  north,  and,  the  back  of 
west,  will  have  a  favorable  exposure. 

78 


the  stables  beir^  set  to  the 


A  conspicuous  feature  of  the  map  represents  the  proposed  reser- 
voir, with  a  broad,  shaded  drive  ;  course  for  saddle  horses,  and  a 
walk  laid  out  about  it.  My  first  understanding  with  the  commission- 
ers was,  that  the  park  was  to  be  extended  in  the  direction  of  the 
Cotes  des  Neiges  Cemetery,  taking  in  thirty  acres  more  of  the  dale- 
like alluvial  district  which  I  call  the  Glades.  I  thought  this  most  de- 
sirable, 1  ecause  it  afforded  the  opportunity  of  exhibiting  here  an 
exquisite  landscape,  which  would  have  been  the  more  charming 
from  its  contrast  with  the  general  character  of  the  scenery  of  the 
mountain,    and   would   have   made    that    more    striking   and    inter- 

esting. 

Wishing  to  keep  this  as  idyllic  as  possible,  and  knowing  that  in  all 
much  frequented  public  parks  there  comes  a  demand  for  a  general 
rendezvous  or  public  promenade,  and  that,  if  it  is  not  provided  for, 
some  stretch  of  road,  often  very  poorly  adapted  to  the  purpose,  is 
made  to  serve  for  it,  I  had  laid  out  a  drive,  ride,  and  walk,  m  an- 
other  part  of  the  park,  with  this  object  in  view,  and  had  made  a  dis- 
tinct short  circuit  here  of  a  more  retired  character. 

When  the  commissioners,  last  year,  were  driven  to  the  conclusion 
that  it  was  inexpedient  to  propose  the  acquisition  of  any  more  terri- 
tory, even  if  a  corresponding  reduction  of  that  originally  in  view  was 
made,  and  when  the  Common  Council  determined  that  a  reservoir 
was  required  at  this  point,  I  reversed,  in  my  design,  these  features  of 
the  system  of  communication,  and  adopted  a  more  picturesque  method 
for  the  higher  ground,  with  narrower,  more  winding,  and  somewhat 
steeper  roads,  and,  after  much  debate,  arranged  with  Mr.  LeSage, 
the  engineer  of  the  water-works,  this  outline  for  the  reservoir,  which 
allows  a  grand  promenade,  half  a  mile  in  length,  upon  a  circuit  of 
easy  curves,  to  be  placed  much  nearer  the  city. 

It  is  on  the  border  of  the  park,  and  as  no  one  is  compelled  to  en- 
ter it  in  passing  to  the  more  sylvan  and  picturesque  districts  beyond, 
it  is  practically  an  affair  by  itself,  not  a  part  of  the  park  proper. 

The  circuit  of  the  promenade  is,  on  an  average,  a  little  more  than 
half  a  mile  in  length.  The  pad  for  saddle  horses  is  represented  as 
twenty  feet  wide,  the  carriage-way  forty,  and  the  walk  fifteen,  which 
dimensions  can  be  enlarged  if  you  prefer.  It  is  a  question  of  expense. 
All  the  divisions  of  the  promenade  are  well  shaded  by  trees  symmet- 
rically  arranged. 

There  is  a  pavilion  on  the  knoll  to  the  eastward  for  overlooking  the 
promenade,  and  there  are  gaps  in  the  lines  of  shade  trees,  which  leave 
the  view  open  from  this  pavilion  and  from  the  promenade  across  the 
water  in  the  direction  of  the  Lake  of  the  Two  Mountains. 

A  road  is  indicated,  leading  out  of  the  park  in  the  same  direction. 
This  road  should,  for  some  distance,  be  a  park-way,  with  broad  bor- 
ders of  turf  and  shrubbery,  and  building  lines  should  be  established, 

79 


i^  M 


which  would  prevent  the  view  from  being  obstructed  or  marred  by 
incongruous  objects  on  private  property. 

Seats  and  drinking-fountains  are  expected  to  be  placed  adjoining 
the  walks  at  frequent  intervals.  Some  of  these  seats  should  be  cov- 
ered by  a  tight  roof  so  as  to  afford  shelter  in  rain  ;  others  shaded, 
either  by  trees  or  trellis-work  and  vines,  and  some  should  be  open 
above  and  screened  about  for  old  people,  who,  in  the  spring  and  au- 
tumn, enjoy  to  sit  in  the  sun  and  out  of  the  wind,  but  the  precise 
position  and  character  of  these  things  is  considered  to  be  a  question 
of  detail  not  belonging  to  the  general  plan  of  so  large  a  ground. 

At  each  of  the  entrances  on  the  town  side  of  the  park,  shelters  are  in- 
dicated. These  should  be  larger,  and  should  have  roofs  and  movable 
blinds  or  shutters,  so  they  can  be  made  tight  on  the  windward  side. 
They  will  be  made  use  of,  not  only  as  shelters  from  rain,  but  as  ren- 
dezvous for  persons  agreeing  to  meet  to  walk  together  in  the  park,  or 
for  parties  which  break  up  in  the  park  and  wish  to  unite  before  going 
home  There  are  so  many  other  things  of  more  importance  to  be  se- 
cured, that  these  should  not  be  expensive  structures,  but,  C'entually, 
lodges  furnishing  accommodations  similar  to  those  of  small  railway 
stations  will  be  desirable  in  these  positions.  I  would  advise  you  also 
not  to  put  your  money,  at  present,  into  elaborate  entrance  ways. 

As  to  an  exterior  fence,  you  can  have  none  which  will  be  more 
suitable  for  a  long  time  to  come,  than  one  of  the  simplest  form  of 
split  palings  of  wood,  such  as  is  commonly  used  for  private  parks  in 
England. 

I  have  thought  that  you  might,  by  and  by,  wish  to  have  a  small 
herd  of  deer,  and,  the  lower  part  of  the  Brackenfell  being  an  excellent 
situation  for  the  purpose,  have  indicated  a  line  of  fence,  and  posi- 
tion for  sheds  and  stables  for  them,  so  placed  as  to  be  inconspicuous, 
and  interrupt  no  communication.  The  arrangement  admits  of  the 
maintenance  of  perfectly  satisfactory  and  appropriate  landscape 
effects,  but  is  not  at  all  essential  to  the  general  design. 

I  will  say  no  more  upon  the  distinctively  artificial  features  of  the 
design,  only,  I  pray  you,  never  for  a  moment  to  forget  that  they  are 
not  objects  to  be  desired  in  themselves  ;  that  they  are  rather  the  im- 
pedimenta of  the  undertaking.  Bear  in  mind  that  it  is  in  the  earth, 
the  rocks,  the  soil,  and  what  the  soil,  by  the  skilful  adaptation  of 
means  to  well-chosen  ends,  shall  be  made  to  produce  and  support,  that 
the  essential  value  of  this  property  is  to  consist.  These  are  the  meat 
and  drink  of  the  entertainment,  to  which  the  roads  and  walks  and 
buildings  are  as  knives  and  forks. 


80 


pr  ,>; 


J( 


